Pensions Statement
PFNI response to Supreme Court ruling on firefighters' pension
Colleagues.
Today we have received the news that the Government have been refused leave appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, which had previously held the transitional pension arrangements for Firefighters and Judges were illegal on the grounds of age discrimination.
We have been warning for some time about the potential negative impact on the pensions of our members if the problem is not addressed appropriately and have previously advised that we would take the matter forward once the outcome was known.
We will now move to have the Government issue an expeditious response to this and along with the representative bodies from England, Wales and Scotland will work to fully assess what this will mean for all our members, and how those on the different schemes will be affected.
This will have an impact on ALL public sector pensions and we need the Government to issue its response expeditiously to assess what it will mean for our members.
There are meetings of the UK Police Pensions Consultative Forum, and the Scheme Advisory Board next Monday where all key policing stakeholders, including ourselves, will discuss the implications of the ruling and our next steps. PFNI will be represented by our Secretary, Liam Kelly, who will update subsequent to these meetings.
This is a great result for those of you whose pensions were affected and we hope that there is a swift remedy by Government.
We will update our website with further information as we receive it.