Remedy arrangements for police pension schemes: FOI release

Information requested

This FOI request concerns the SPPA responsibilities around the 2015 Remedy arrangements for police pension schemes and the decisions around prioritisation of the issue of Remediable Service Statements (RSSs) and the fact that SPPA breached the 31st March statutory deadline to issue RSSs to thousands of pensioners in financial detriment.

Specifically,

1. How many RSSs were issued in May 2025?

2. What was the categorisation of the RSSs issued in this month?

3. How many non-complex RSSs remained to be issued after 31st May 2025?

4. Why has the new automation processes failed to deliver all the non-complex RSSs by the SPPA issued deadline date of 31st May 2025?

5. Between October 2023 and March 2025, the SPPA issued numerous website updates and emails stating that non-protected pensioners in financial detriment would have their RSS issue prioritised over fully protected previously retired officers who were in no financial detriment during that period. In March 2025 that prioritisation commitment inexplicably changed and SPPA decided to prioritise the issue of 2831 RSSs to fully protected retired officers and did not deliver a single RSS in March 2025 to non-protected pensioners in financial detriment. Who at SPPA decided to do this and what was the reason for completely changing the prioritisation criteria? To be clear there was also no concurrent approach in March either.

6. Why did SPPA not specifically explain at an early stage on their website that all the 2831 RSSs issued in March 2025 were going to fully protected officers? Did they not think pensioners in financial detriment deserved this when it was obvious SPPA were already announcing not being able to meet the deadline and invoking the clause in Section 29 10/b of the PSPJOA?

Response

1. 320 RSS were issued in May 2025.

2. The majority of RSS’s issued were to Tapered members, but we also processed Protected and Unprotected too.

3. As of 4th June 2025, approximately 1,500 Police scheme RSS are outstanding. All the remaining RSS have some form of complexity associated with them, which is why it is taking longer for them to be processed.

4. As of 4th June 2025, all the remaining RSS have some form of complexity associated with them, which is why it is taking longer for them to be processed.

5. Those in detriment are still prioritised, however all cohorts are being dealt with concurrently given the position in relation to the deadlines. Many ill-health cases require third party information which means these cannot be remedied until all relevant information is available to administrators and involve complex calculations.

6.The SPPA was not obliged to specifically explain at an early stage on the website that all the 2831 RSSs issued in March 2025 were going to fully protected officers.

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