Understanding your protected pension rights

Some members of older Scottish Firefighters’ pensions schemes qualified for protected pension rights when the current Scottish Firefighters’ Pension Scheme was introduced in 2015. Depending on how close you were to retirement when the current scheme was introduced in 2015, you may have qualified for ‘full’ or ‘tapered’ protection.

Full protection

If you qualified for full protection, you’ll have continued to earn benefits in your former scheme as before and you’ll have kept the same normal pension age. To qualify for full protection, you had to have been paying into your scheme on 1 April 2012 and 1 April 2015 and you had to meet certain age or services conditions.

If you were in the Firefighters’ 1992 scheme, your ongoing rights were fully protected in that scheme if, on 1 April 2012, you were at least 45 years old or were 40 or over with at least 20 years’ service.

If you were in the Firefighters’ 2006 scheme, your ongoing rights were fully protected if, on 1 April 2012, you were aged 50 or over.

Tapered protection

Tapered protection was also extended to some members of the Firefighter’s Pension Scheme (1992) and the New Firefighters’ Pension Scheme (2006) who were close to retirement when the Firefighters’ 2015 scheme was launched but didn’t qualify for full protection.

If you were within four years of qualifying for full protection and were paying into your pension scheme on 1 April 2012 and 1 April 2015, you’ll join the 2015 scheme at a later date.

Further reading

Firefighters’ Pension Scheme Scotland 2015

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