Miscellaneous

If you are enquiring about voluntary retirement estimates, these can be found by running your own estimations through Member Self Service.

If you have any tax enquiries on your pension please phone the tax office on 0300 200 3300.

We administer Pensions for Teaching Assistants/Support Staff/Meal Time Assistants for Schools, but Not Teachers. Teachers will need to contact the Teachers’ Pension Scheme on 0845 60 66 166.

Please find information on our Target Professional Services page.

It takes approximately 2-3 weeks to send out all members’ Personal Benefit Statements. You should receive it by 31 August each year. If you are concerned that your Personal Benefit Statement hasn’t arrived, or your colleagues have received their statements and you still haven’t received yours after one week, please contact us.

If you’re a Devon County Pension Fund member you will not receive a paper copy. Instead, you will receive an email confirming that your statement is available to view online. If you would still like a paper copy, you can specifically request one.

If you’re a Somerset County Pension Fund member and have registered with Member Self Service or you joined the Pension Scheme after 1 April 2015, you will not receive a paper copy. Instead, you will receive an email confirming that your statement is available to view online. If you would still like a paper copy, you can specifically request one.

The figure shown is the average pensionable pay you have received within the previous financial year (plus pay award increase) and not your current salary scale.

If the figure is more than anticipated, it is worth noting that it is up rated to a full-time equivalent figure (37 hours a week, 52 weeks a year), so this figure could be much higher than you are accustomed to, if you are a part-time employee.

If the figure is less than anticipated, it could be that some of your earnings (various bonuses, non-contractual overtime etc) are not pensionable under the 2008 LGPS regulations. Only pensionable pay is used in your pension calculations.

This could be due to a number of reasons, but the most common reasons are:

Reduced working hours

Your pensionable service is based on the proportion of full-time hours you work. If you reduce your hours, your pensionable service will be recalculated to reflect your new hours.

For example; 10 years service at 37 hours per week (full-time) would give you 10 years pensionable service. However, 10 years service at 18.5 hours per week (exactly half of full-time hours) would provide you with 5 years pensionable service.

Please note: All service accrued before your change in hours, will not be effected and your pension will be based on the higher hours work previously.

Transferring in from a previous occupational/personal pension scheme

When you start working for an employer contributing to the Devon or Somerset Pension Fund, you must inform us of any previous pension benefits you may have accrued during your working life.

An application for a transfer of benefits must be made within the first 12 months of starting your LGPS membership, otherwise you risk losing your right to transfer in previous service.

Please let us know on your starter’s document or by getting in touch.

Full-time/Part-time hours

Generally, staff who work in education only work during term-time. So, although you work full-time hours when schools are open, on average you work less than 37 hours a week over the course of a year. In order for pension benefits for part-time people to be calculated fairly, your hours are adjusted to take your term-time-only status into account.

Alternatively, you may have forgotten to transfer previous service, perhaps you took a refund of contributions for a small part of service, or you didn’t join the scheme from the start of an employment. If you cannot see where the discrepancy arises, please contact us.

The actual number of Added Years you have purchased (which were only available in the pre-2014 scheme) are not shown on the Personal Benefit Statement. However, the calculations themselves do take the added years into account. Both the pension figure and the lump sum figure should reflect the additional membership you have purchased.

Also, the figures shown for any Additional Pension you may have purchased under the post-2014 CARE scheme are also excluded from the Personal Benefits Statement.

AVCs are not included in the Personal Benefits Statement. The payments for your AVCs go into a different plan to your Local Government pension and are kept separate from the benefit forecasts. You should receive a separate statement from Prudential informing you of the current value of your contributions. The timing of this will depend on the provider.

Please see our how to make a payment page.