How do my pension benefits build up
In the Local Government Pension Scheme your pension is calculated as follows. Each year you pay into the scheme you will build up a yearly pension account.
Every year we will take your earnings and multiply this by 1/49th. This will be the amount of pension you build up that year.
This yearly pension account will then be increased each year by the consumer price index (CPI) up to your retirement date. We then repeat this calculation for each year you are a member of the scheme.
The way we calculate your pension is called career average revalued earnings (CARE).
Example
In the following example we show the new calculation format:
A member who earned £16,000 from 1/4/2017 to 31/3/2018 builds up a 1/49th of that pay towards their pension.
I.e. £16,000 x 1/49 = £326.53
Sickness or injury
If during the scheme year you had been on leave on reduced pay or no pay due to sickness or injury, or had been on relevant child related leave or reserve forces service leave then, for the period of that leave, your pension is based on your assumed pensionable pay. This is the pay you would have received from your employer had you not been on reduced or no pay.
If you joined before 1 April 2014
You will also have built up benefits in the final salary scheme. Your benefits in the LGPS built up before 1 April 2014, are based on:
- your membership in the Scheme up to 31 March 2014
and
- your final pay when you leave the scheme, although the benefits based on membership to 31 March 2008 are calculated slightly differently to benefits based on membership between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2014