28 April 2020

We have now had confirmation that the benefit statements will be proceeding as per the Fire SAB decision to issue ABS for 31 March 2020 with projections based on the current scheme rules. The Home Office have agreed a standard caveat with HM Treasury and issued this for use across all Police and Fire statements.

This caveat has been included in the updated ABS 2020 template and notes in the table below.

We will look to convene a meeting of the Fire Communications Working Group imminently, to agree how we will distribute the message to members that this year’s statements will continue to project based on current scheme rules.

3 April 2020

Earlier this year the technical group agreed that in order to gain consistency in the issue of Annual Benefit Statements (ABS) for 2020 a central direction from the Scheme Advisory Board would be required. A paper was provided to the Board who duly considered this issue and agreed that ABS should be provided based on projections to normal retirement age (accepting that those projections will be based on current FPS 2015 rules), on the proviso that the Board would work with the communications group to provide standard documentation for members explaining the reason for this decision.

However, we have this week (commencing 30 March 2020) been informed that the central PSPS steering group of policy leads from all the main public service pension schemes, which the Home Office attend, have agreed that a central approach will need to be taken by all public service pension schemes on this matter and that individual schemes should not be taking their own approach.

We appreciate that work will have already started on the provision of ABS and we are working to update the annual benefit statement template. We will work with the Home Office on this and provide updates as soon as we are able.