Educational, not advice. This article explains what the April 2026 LGPS changes mean for members. It doesn’t tell you what to do with your pension. For decisions that depend on your personal circumstances, talk to a regulated adviser or MoneyHelper.
What this article covers
- Does: Walk through the five member-facing changes to the LGPS in England and Wales that came into force on 1 April 2026, with worked examples and the practical “what do I do” answer for each.
- Doesn’t: Cover Scotland or Northern Ireland (separate regulators and timetables), or anything outside SI 2026/226 (the “Access and Fairness” instrument). For the underlying scheme mechanics, see the LGPS guide.
- If you need advice: Speak to a regulated financial adviser, or contact MoneyHelper for free, government-backed guidance.
The LGPS (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Member Benefits) Regulations 2026 were laid before Parliament on 6 March and came into force on 1 April. The package goes by “Access and Fairness”, five changes that range from automatic improvements for members on family leave right now, to retrospective money owed to estates going back to 2014. Two of the five are worth passing on to a family member if they’re a survivor of someone who was in the LGPS.
Here’s what each one means in practice.
In short
- Unpaid maternity, adoption and shared parental leave now builds pension automatically at Assumed Pensionable Pay. No buyback election needed.
- Survivor pensions are equalised regardless of sex or civil partnership status, backdated as far as 5 December 2005. Funds will proactively identify and pay arrears.
- The age 75 cap on death grants is gone, backdated to 1 April 2014. Estates of members who died aged 75 or over may be owed money.
- Late death grants (paid after the two-year window) can now be handled at fund discretion, avoiding the 45% special lump sum tax charge.
- Cohabitee survivor pensions no longer require a nomination form for deaths between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2014, formalising what most funds were already doing in practice.
1. Unpaid family leave builds pension. No buyback needed.
Before 1 April 2026, only the paid part of maternity, adoption and shared parental leave automatically built up pension at Assumed Pensionable Pay (APP, broadly your normal pensionable pay before the leave started). Unpaid additional periods were different: you had 30 days after returning to work to elect to buy back the lost pension via a Shared Cost Additional Pension Contribution, with your employer covering two-thirds of the cost. Miss that window and the pension from those weeks was gone.
From 1 April 2026 unpaid additional maternity, adoption and shared parental leave builds pension at APP automatically, through a new mechanism called a Qualifying Additional Pension Arrangement (QAPA). No election, no deadline, no action needed from you. Your fund and employer deal with it between them. The employer contribution requirement is built into the regulations.
The buyback window for other types of unpaid child-related leave has also been extended, from 30 days to a full year after returning to work. If you came back from leave recently and let the old 30-day deadline slip, contact your fund. The door may be open again.
Who it affects. Any LGPS member going on unpaid additional maternity, adoption or shared parental leave on or after 1 April 2026. Also anyone who returned from child-related leave within the last year and missed the buyback window.
What you need to do. For leave starting from 1 April 2026, nothing. It’s automatic. If you missed a buyback window recently, ring your administering authority and ask about the extended one-year deadline.
2. Survivor pensions equalised, backdated decades
Under the pre-2026 rules, how much survivor pension a partner received could vary depending on the sex of the member, the sex of the survivor, and the type of relationship (marriage versus civil partnership, same-sex versus opposite-sex). The government has been fixing this disparity across public service schemes for years. From 1 April 2026 it’s done in the LGPS: survivor pensions are calculated the same way regardless of any of those factors. And the fix is backdated:
- Opposite-sex marriages: backdated to 5 December 2005
- Same-sex marriages: backdated to 13 March 2014
- Opposite-sex civil partnerships: backdated to 2 December 2019
Funds are required to identify affected survivors and pay arrears. Your fund should reach out. You don’t need to file a claim. But if you’re already receiving a survivor pension and suspect it’s been calculated on the wrong basis, call your administering authority rather than waiting for them to work through the queue.
Who it affects. Survivors of LGPS members in England and Wales who died after the relevant backdating date for their relationship type. How much is owed depends on the size of the calculation gap and how far back it runs.
What you need to do. Nothing, if you can wait. If you’d rather not, ring your fund.
3. Age 75 cap on death grants removed, backdated to 2014
The LGPS pays a death grant of three times APP when an active member dies. Until 1 April 2026, that only applied if the member died before age 75. Die at 75 or older, even if you were still actively accruing pension on a part-time post, and nothing was paid to your nominated beneficiaries. It was a long-standing anomaly that sat particularly badly given how many members the scheme’s flexible and late retirement rules keep working well into their 70s.
The cap is gone. Death grants are payable regardless of age at death. And this is backdated to 1 April 2014. Estates of active members who died aged 75 or over at any point since that date may be owed a grant that was never paid.
Funds are required to track down eligible beneficiaries from those estates. If you’re an executor or next-of-kin for an LGPS member who died at 75 or later since April 2014 and no death grant ever came, don’t wait, contact the fund directly.
Who it affects. Estates of active LGPS members who died aged 75 or over between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2026. Three times APP can be a significant sum for long-serving members.
What you need to do. If you think this applies to someone’s estate, contact their LGPS fund. Find the right one at lgpsmember.org/contact-your-fund.
4. Late death grants: fund discretion, no 45% tax hit
When a death grant isn’t paid within two years of the member’s death, HMRC rules historically triggered a 45% “special lump sum death benefits charge” on the payment. That charge fell either on the recipient or was absorbed by the fund. Either way, it was a real deterrent to pursuing unpaid grants in slow or complicated estates. Funds sometimes sat on their hands rather than deal with the tax consequences.
From 1 April 2026, administering authorities have discretion to pay late death grants through mechanisms that sidestep the 45% charge. The old requirement to pay into the deceased’s estate once the two-year window had passed is also removed, which gives funds more room to act in the beneficiaries’ interests rather than defaulting to the worst tax outcome.
Who it affects. Anyone waiting on a death grant where estate administration has dragged past the two-year mark.
What you need to do. If it’s been over two years since the member died and no grant has been paid, contact the fund. The new discretion may unblock things that were previously stuck.
5. Cohabitee survivor pensions: nomination form no longer required
The LGPS has paid survivor pensions to qualifying cohabiting partners since 2008: two years of continuous cohabitation immediately before the member’s death, no concurrent marriage or civil partnership with anyone else, and you’re in. But the 2008 to 2014 scheme regulations had a separate requirement buried in the small print: the member had to have formally nominated you. No nomination form on file, no pension, even if you’d lived together for twenty years.
After a 2021 government letter told funds to disregard the requirement, most already had. But “most” left room for inconsistency, and the position was never clean. The April 2026 regulations fix that: for deaths occurring between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2014, the nomination form requirement is gone. The relationship criteria still stand. The form does not.
The people this matters to are surviving partners of LGPS members who died in that 2008 to 2014 window and were turned down because no form existed, or who never applied in the first place because they assumed the form requirement would block them.
Who it affects. Cohabiting partners of LGPS members who died between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2014 where no nomination form was on file and no survivor pension was paid.
What you need to do. Contact the fund. The retrospective removal of the form requirement means the door is open for claims in that window that were previously rejected or never made.
Worked examples
Example 1: Priya, returning from unpaid maternity leave
Priya is a housing officer at her district council, pensionable salary £36,000. She took six months of paid maternity leave and then three months of unpaid additional leave, returning in June 2026.
Under the old rules, the paid stretch built pension at APP automatically. The three unpaid months were a different matter: Priya would have had 30 days from her return date to elect to buy them back, with her employer covering two-thirds of the cost. Forget the deadline (or not know it existed) and those months were gone.
Under the April 2026 rules, the QAPA mechanism covers the unpaid months automatically. No election, no deadline to track. The full nine months (paid and unpaid) build pension at APP. Three months at £36,000 adds roughly £183 to Priya’s annual pension (£36,000 × 3/12 × 1/49). Not life-changing on its own, but she doesn’t have to do anything. It just happens.
Example 2: Derek, executor of his father’s estate
Derek’s father worked for a county council and retired aged 72 into a part-time arrangement, still accruing LGPS pension. He died aged 77 in October 2019. APP at that point was £28,000. Because he was over 75 at death, no death grant was paid. His family got nothing from the death benefit.
October 2019 falls inside the backdating window (1 April 2014 onwards). The cap is lifted. The death grant is 3 × £28,000 = £84,000. Derek’s fund is required to reach out, but if they haven’t, Derek can prompt them using the directory at lgpsmember.org/contact-your-fund. That’s a payment worth chasing.
Common questions
Do I need to contact my fund about any of these changes?
The unpaid leave change is automatic. No action needed for leave starting from 1 April 2026. For survivor pension equalisation and the age 75 death grant backdating, funds are obliged to identify and contact affected people, so you should hear from them. If you haven’t and think you’re in scope, don’t wait: ring your fund. The late death grant change and the cohabitee nomination form removal are both things you’d need to raise yourself if you believe they apply to a past case.
I went on maternity leave before 1 April 2026 and am still on leave. Does the new rule apply to me?
The QAPA mechanism covers absences ongoing or starting from 1 April 2026. If your unpaid leave straddles that date, the portion from 1 April onwards should be automatic; the portion before it may still need a buyback election. You now have a year from your return date to make that election rather than 30 days, so there’s no rush, but do check with your fund on the specifics of your leave dates.
How long will it take funds to work through survivor pension arrears?
No timetable is set in the regulations. Funds with large memberships and long backdating windows, especially the opposite-sex marriage one going back to 2005, are facing a substantial administrative exercise, and some will take longer than others. If you want a faster answer than “we’ll be in touch,” call your fund.
The death grant arrears sound large. Is the money definitely there to pay them?
Yes. LGPS funds in England and Wales were at an aggregate funding level of 107% at the 2022 valuation, a £22 billion surplus. The retrospective payments sit on the funds rather than central government, but with that level of surplus there’s no systemic risk. Individual fund positions vary, and less well-funded funds carry more strain, but the legal obligation to pay is the same regardless of funding level.
Do these changes apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland?
No. SI 2026/226 applies to the LGPS in England and Wales only. Scotland’s scheme is administered by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency; Northern Ireland’s by NILGOSC. Both have been moving on similar improvements through their own regulatory instruments and timescales. Check scotlgpsmember.org or nilgosc.org.uk if you’re in either of those jurisdictions.
What if I’m no longer working in local government? Do these changes still apply to me?
For the backdated death grant and survivor pension changes, yes. Those apply based on when the member died and what type of member they were (active, deferred, or retired) not on whether they were still in employment. The unpaid leave change is the exception: that only applies to people currently in active employment with the LGPS.
Where can I read the actual regulations?
The full statutory instrument is SI 2026/226 on legislation.gov.uk. The plain-English explainer from the LGPS member site is at lgpsmember.org. The government’s formal consultation response is on GOV.UK.
Pension Plain’s take
Most member-facing pension reform is dry, technical, and lands in the small print of an annual statement. This package is different. Two of the five changes are about money that’s owed and was previously not paid: death grants for estates of members who died at 75 or older, and survivor pensions calculated on the wrong basis going back to 2005. If you’ve got a relative who died as an LGPS member, the chance that one of these affects their estate or surviving partner is real, and the sums can be substantial.
The unpaid family leave change is also more meaningful than it looks. The previous 30-day buyback window was the kind of administrative trap that disproportionately caught members who were dealing with a new baby and not in a position to read regulatory small print on day 31. Making the build-up automatic removes the trap. The buyback window extension to a year is a useful safety net for the leave types it still applies to.
Funds are obliged to identify affected estates and survivors. Most will, in time. But “in time” can mean years for the larger backdating windows. If you suspect the changes affect someone you know, the practical answer is to write to the fund rather than wait for the letter.
Information, not advice. This article describes changes to the LGPS (England and Wales) introduced by SI 2026/226, in force from 1 April 2026. It isn’t regulated financial advice and doesn’t take account of your personal circumstances. Pension decisions can have lifetime consequences, so consider speaking to a regulated financial adviser or to MoneyHelper before making one. Pension Plain is not authorised or regulated by the FCA.
Key official sources
- SI 2026/226: The Local Government Pension Scheme (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Member Benefits) Regulations 2026 (legislation.gov.uk).
- Improving access and fairness in the LGPS (lgpsmember.org, 8 April 2026).
- GOV.UK: Access and fairness government response.
- lgpsmember.org/contact-your-fund (directory of administering authorities).
- Pension Plain: LGPS guide: how the Local Government Pension Scheme works.
- MoneyHelper (free, impartial pension guidance).
Fact-checked 6 May 2026.