Protections if your rate of pay is reduced
Your LGPS benefits may be protected if your rate of pay is reduced. This may also apply if increases to it are restricted. In either case, this must be for reasons outside your control.
The protection does not apply for temporary reductions in pay or where a temporary pay increase has stopped.
You may qualify for the protection if your employer gives you a Certificate of Protection and you leave the Scheme within 10 years of the reduction or restriction.
If you believe that your benefits may be protected, you can ask your employer to give you a Certificate of Protection. You must ask within 12 months of the reduction or restriction. Your employer will check whether you qualify and, if so, give you a certificate.
If you ask your employer after then, your employer can decide to give you a certificate. Your employer can also decide to do so if you don’t ask. This is a discretion.
If you qualify for the protection, you will be able to choose whether to apply the protection to your LGPS benefits. Your pension fund will give you this choice when you leave the employment.
Benefits built up after March 2015
If you choose to apply the protection, your pension fund will increase the pay you receive from the date of the reduction or restriction when it works out your benefits.
Benefits built up before April 2015
If you choose to apply the protection, your pension fund can use an earlier year’s pay than normal as your final pay. This can be the best pay in any of the last five years or the best annual average pay from any consecutive three years in the last 13 years. Though, your pension fund will not use pay from more than three years before the reduction or restriction.