The Local Government Pension Scheme (Amendment No. 2) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2023 were made on 28 September 2023 and came into operation on 1 October 2023.
These regulations are retrospective in effect and have been made to extend the ‘statutory underpin’ to younger scheme members. The statutory underpin was the mechanism which originally protected members who were closest to retirement when the Government reformed public service pension schemes in 2015. Similar provisions in relation to other public service pension schemes were found to be age discriminatory and the Westminster Government confirmed that changes would be made to all main public sector schemes, including the LGPS (NI), to remove the discrimination. This is known as the McCloud Remedy.
In addition, these regulations also make a number of changes to ensure that the underpin works in line with policy intent.
The regulations can be viewed in the Resource Library of our website.
