Next phase begins after ECJ ruling in Hampshire

We’ve previously announced that we’d started making increased payments to all pensioners who were most affected by the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (ECJ or CJEU) ruling, because they were subject to the PPF compensation cap (either the standard cap, or the long service cap), which on its own had reduced their benefits to less than 50% of those they had accrued.

All pensioners affected because of the cap alone, and who’ve sent us the information we asked for, are now receiving their increased payments.

What we’re doing now

We’ve now started to work up our approach for assessing and paying the remaining members who are affected by the ruling. We’ll start with pensioners for whom the effect of the cap alone didn’t take them below the 50% minimum, but when this is combined with other factors, do fall below the threshold. These other factors might be:

if the annual increases a member would have received under their former scheme would have been significantly more than the annual increases which apply under the PPF
differences between their former scheme’s benefit structure and the PPF’s benefit structure, eg spouse’s benefits

We believe that the vast majority of members already receive considerably more than 50% of the value of their original scheme benefits. So the first thing we’re doing is collecting data where we need to. This will allow us to confirm the details of members who we think will be affected because of the combination of the cap and these factors, and details of their former scheme benefits.

We’re also gathering data for the remainder of members, who have not been capped and are affected only because of other factors.

What you need to do if you think you’re in either of these groups

You don’t need to do anything unless we contact you.

Following the work we’ve done to increase payments for capped pensioners, we expect that in many cases we’ve gathered enough information to make the necessary calculations. But in some cases we’ll need to write to those capped pensioners who we think will be affected because of the combination of the cap and other factors, and whom we haven’t already asked for information, to ask for a copy of the last benefit statement they received from their former scheme.

We think we’ve got enough information to begin assessing and calculating increases for uncapped members who we think are affected by the other factors alone. We’ll only write to members in this category if we don’t have enough information collected from our earlier data gathering.

Making payments

We’re doing everything we can to pay members as quickly as possible. We hope to be able to start making payments early in the New Year, but we expect it will take some time before we are able to process all the necessary increases.

We’ll prioritise those who have sent us the additional information we’ve asked for, and are already pensioners or approaching retirement.

Paying arrears

Although we’ll continue to process these increases, we won’t yet pay arrears (including tax-free cash) because there are ongoing court proceedings about the way we’re calculating increases. We believe it would be wrong to risk having to recover over-payments if the court decides that we must take a different approach. We don’t yet know when the court hearing will take place.