The next stage in the Fire Brigades Union’s (FBU) pensions battle will be held on 18 December 2019, when a provisional hearing has been listed at the Employment Tribunal.
The hearing will look at proposals to address how the illegal parts of the government’s discriminatory attacks on firefighters’ pensions must be changed to comply with the law.
In 2015, the Tory-Lib Dem government carried out a series of attacks on firefighter pensions, which included a built-in “transitional protection” proposal which kept older firefighters on better pension schemes while younger members were moved onto a new, worse pension scheme.
In December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that this transitional protection arrangement constituted age discrimination and was therefore illegal. The government then attempted an appeal to the Supreme Court which was denied in June 2019 therefore ending their legal challenge. They have since confirmed that the ruling will be applied across all public sector pensions.
The hearing date for the firefighter’s case is later than those scheduled for similar claims from judges or police as the judge who presided over the original Employment Tribunal relating to the FBU case has since retired. This has caused a delay, while the Tribunal made alternative arrangements for our hearing.
