Active police members not eligible for tapering: FOI Review

Information requested

Original Request 202500460860

“1. When did the SPPA first phone, email or letter active members informing them that they would be liable to pay interest on contributions
2. When did the SPPA first phone, email or letter active members informing them of the interest rate that would be payable.
3. What plans were made before October 2024 to allow members to pay these contributions in full up front using savings etc and not from salary on receipt of their remedy statement from October 2024
4. When did the SPPA first inform the police credit union that active members would begin receiving remedy statements in October 2024”

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) seeking information about active police members who were not eligible for tapering and about interest on contributions, and your follow-up correspondence to us dated 20th May 2025. This response seeks to answer the points raised in the follow-up correspondence.

In your original request, you asked:

“1. When did the SPPA first phone, email or letter active members informing them that they would be liable to pay interest on contributions
2. When did the SPPA first phone, email or letter active members informing them of the interest rate that would be payable.
3. What plans were made before October 2024 to allow members to pay these contributions in full up front using savings etc and not from salary on receipt of their remedy statement from October 2024
4. When did the SPPA first inform the police credit union that active members would begin receiving remedy statements in October 2024”

Your 20th May correspondence highlighted that the information you were seeking was specifically non- tapered active police members and your view was that the answers provided to questions 1 and 2 were more general in nature as opposed to specifically for the non-tapered active police pension scheme members. You also made reference to our FOI response and the reference to Treasury Directions. For information, these directions can be found at - Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022: Treasury Directions - GOV.UK. To note that the SPPA does not manage or control the UK Government website.

Your follow-up response seeks clarity about whether we communicated information about the interest rates with the Scottish Police Federation. I can confirm that the SPPA did communicate this information to police stakeholder organisations, including the Scottish Police Federation on 5 October 2022, informing them that interest would be payable on these contributions and also informing them of the final interest rate.

You asked for clarification about when the SPPA first published the 4% rate and if this was on 30th September 2024. The first time applicable interest rate was published on the SPPA website was 30/09/2024.

Parts of your review request have been treated as new requests and have been issued to you (FOI ref 202500469578).

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.