Frequently Asked Questions - Active Members
Miscellaneous
A: The level of contributions you pay is dependent on your full time equivalent pensionable earnings. The lowest rate is 5.5% of your pay and the highest rate is 7.5%. However, in real terms it will be less than that because your contributions will attract tax relief. This means your pension contributions are deducted from your salary before you pay tax. In most cases you will also pay reduced national insurance contributions.
Details of current contribution rate bands are available in the Pension Scheme Information section.
A: Yes you will. Being a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme does not affect in any way your entitlement to the basic state pension. However, whilst you remain a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme, as with all pension schemes that are 'contracted out', you will not be contributing to the additional element of the State Pension known as the State Second Pension (S2P). This element used to be known as SERPS.
More details regarding your state pension can be found at The Pension Service website, please see our Other Useful Sites page.
A: Your employer makes a contribution to the pension fund as determined by the Fund's Actuary. Your employer's contribution is reviewed every three years.
A: Pension Services will need to contact your former pension provider and ask them for a current 'transfer value' of the benefits held in their fund. No formal transfer will take place until Pension Services have written authority from you that you wish the transfer to proceed. An application to investigate a transfer must be made within 12 months of joining the LGPS.
A: There are no defined periods and, as different organisations [eg: employers, pension providers, NI Contribution Agency] may need to be involved, some transfers can take a longer time to complete.
A: If you work part-time, your membership / service will be recorded as the "full-time equivalent" period i.e. 2 years at ½ time = 1 year full-time.
For example, if you have worked half-time since you commenced your employment 6 calendar years and 6 months (181 days) ago, your total membership credit is 50% of 6 years 181 days, i.e. 3 years 91 days
As we use the full-time equivalent pay in all calculations of your pension benefits, any earlier full-time service will always be protected.
A: If you work term-time, your membership is reduced in accordance with the number of paid term-time weeks for which you are employed. For example, if a person works half-time - 18 1/2 hours a week out of a standard 37 hours - for 45.22 paid weeks a year, their percentage of whole-time membership would be calculated as follows:
Firstly, reduce contractual hours by paid term-time weeks: 18.50 x 45.22/52.14 = 16.04
Secondly, work out percentage of whole-time membership: 16.04/37 x 100 = 43.35%
i.e. the amount of membership on which your benefits will be calculated is:
365 X 43.35% = 158 days
A: You can purchase extra pension in the Local Government Pension Scheme by paying Additional Regular Contributions (ARCs). You could also consider making payments to the scheme's Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) arrangement or even make payments to a Personal Pension, Stakeholder Pension or Free -standing AVC scheme of your own choice.
Please see our booklet "Ways of increasing your pension benefits" in the Forms section.
Last Modified:
12/11/2009 14:05:31
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