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The rules of the pension scheme changed on 1 October 2023 to address age discrimination. You may qualify for underpin protection if you were an active member of the LGPS on or before 1 April 2012 and active between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2022. If you do qualify for underpin protection, you do not need to do anything we will write to you in due course.

Councillor Paul Crossley, Chair of the Avon Pension Fund Committee and Councillor Shaun Stephenson-McGall, Committee Vice-Chair and Chair of the Investment Panel, are signatories to a letter calling for action on the global stocktake.

In the latest step towards achieving our net zero goals, we’ve committed £50 million to a new renewables fund. The fund has been created specifically for a consortium of LGPS funds belonging to the Brunel Pension Partnership.

We've worked with our asset manager to move over £700 million of equity investments into an innovative, Paris-aligned funding solution.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has published a member factsheet - The McCloud judgment and your LGPS pension - that summarises the McCloud judgment and changes the Government are making to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

On 9 March 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) laid the LGPS (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (‘the regulations’). The regulations move the annual revaluation date from 1 April to 6 April. The regulations are effective from 31 March 2023.

The Government is launching a new initiative which will allow users to securely view all their pension savings in one place. Savers will be able to choose from a range of Pensions Dashboards and, after verifying their identity, users will be able to trigger a secure digital search across virtually the entire pensions industry. A summary of the pensions found will be displayed back to the user on their smart phone, tablet, or desktop browser.

The SCAPE discount rate is used to set the employer contribution rates in the unfunded public sector pension schemes and to determine the actuarial factors across all public sector schemes. The discount rate was reduced on 30 March 2023 to the consumer price index (CPI) plus 1.7% from CPI plus 2.4%.

The current lifetime allowance of £1,073,100 is being removed from 6th April 2023 and abolished all together from 6th April 2024. The maximum amount of tax-free lump sum that you can withdraw from a pension will remain at £268,275 (25% of the current lifetime allowance of £1,073,100) unless you have a valid (enhanced) protection in place before 6th April 2023.

Looking after our investments so we can pay all pensions in full, while working towards our net zero 2050 goal, are essential priorities for Avon Pension Fund. As we make good progress on reducing our investment portfolio’s carbon emissions, our innovative investment strategy has hit the news.