Police Pension: PPS 1987, 2006 & 2015 explained (2026/27)

If you’re a police officer in England or Wales, the pension scheme you’re in is one of the most generous defined-benefit arrangements still open in the UK, and one of the most expensive for members. From 1 April 2026 you can be paying up to 14.22% of your salary into it, against an employer contribution of 35.3%. In Scotland the numbers are different again, but the basic picture holds: this is a serious pension, and you’re paying serious money for it.

That cost buys you something specific: a defined-benefit pension underwritten by the state, a normal pension age below most public-sector schemes, and, for officers with long pre-2015 service, an unusually valuable final-salary entitlement that no one else in UK public-sector pensions enjoys. It also buys you a fairly bewildering set of rules. There are three police pension schemes operating side by side. There’s a separate compensation regime for injuries on duty. McCloud has rolled most members back into their legacy scheme for the period between 2015 and 2022, with a choice still to be made at retirement. And the contribution structure changed on 1 April 2026.

This guide explains how it actually works.

The three police pension schemes at a glance

Three schemes sit alongside each other. From 1 April 2022 only one of them is still accruing benefits, the Police Pension Scheme 2015, but if you’ve been in service for any length of time, parts of your pension still live in the older schemes and the rules of those older schemes still apply to those parts.

• PPS 1987, the original final-salary scheme. Closed to new entrants on 5 April 2006. The “double accrual” feature lets officers reach a pension worth two-thirds of final pay after 30 years’ service.
• PPS 2006 (sometimes called NPPS), final salary, 1/70 accrual, automatic 4× lump sum, normal pension age 55. Open from 6 April 2006 to 31 March 2015.
• PPS 2015, career average revalued earnings (CARE), 1/55.3 accrual in England and Wales (1/56.1 in Scotland), revaluation of CPI plus 1.25% in service, normal pension age 60. The only scheme open to new entrants since 1 April 2015 and the only scheme accruing benefits for everyone since 1 April 2022.

Police pension schemes side by side (England & Wales, 2026/27)

Feature	PPS 1987	PPS 2006	PPS 2015
Type	Final salary	Final salary	Career average
Accrual	1/60 yrs 1-20, 2/60 yrs 21-30	1/70 each year, max 35	1/55.3 each year, no cap
Maximum pension	2/3 of final pay	1/2 of final pay + 2× lump sum	No cap
Normal pension age	50 with 25 yrs / any age with 30 yrs	55	60
Automatic lump sum	None	4× annual pension	None
Member contributions 2026/27	Closed to accrual	Closed to accrual	12.88% / 13.88% / 14.22% (tiered)
Status from 1 April 2022	Closed; final-salary link kept	Closed; final-salary link kept	Only scheme accruing benefits

What changed on 1 April 2026

The big recent change is the contribution structure for PPS 2015 in England and Wales. Until 31 March 2026, contributions were tiered against full-time-equivalent annualised pensionable earnings, with thresholds at £27,000 and £60,000 that hadn’t moved since 2015. By 2025, pay had drifted up so far that the lowest tier contained no members at all, even constables on entry pay were earning above £27,000.

The Home Office consulted from 20 November 2024 to 29 January 2025, and laid SI 2026/267, The Police Pensions (Member Contributions) (Amendment and Transitional Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2026, which came into force on 1 April 2026. Two things changed at once. The thresholds were updated, and the assessment basis switched from full-time-equivalent annualised pay to actual pensionable earnings.

PPS 2015 member contributions (England & Wales, from 1 April 2026)

Relevant pay	Full rate	Reduced rate (no ill-health cover)
£37,035 or less	12.88%	10.38%
More than £37,035, less than £79,588	13.88%	11.38%
£79,588 or more	14.22%	11.72%

The yield target the scheme has to hit moved from 13.48% to 13.7%, in line with HM Treasury’s cost-sharing requirements. The Police Federation of England and Wales estimates that around 80% of officers see a small rise of around 0.44%, while the other 20%, typically those whose actual earnings fall into a lower tier than their FTE pay would have placed them, see a slight reduction. Part-time officers are the clearest beneficiaries of the switch from FTE to actual pay: they’re now placed in the tier their actual earnings warrant, not the one their full-time-equivalent salary would have put them in.

Scotland kept a flat-rate structure: 13.7% regardless of pay. We’ll come back to that in the Scotland section.

PPS 1987, the legacy scheme that still drives the biggest pensions

The 1987 scheme has been closed to new entrants since 6 April 2006 and closed to active accrual since 1 April 2022. It still matters because it produces the largest pension benefits across the whole police pension system, and because anyone with significant pre-2015 service still has 1987 entitlements that grow with their final salary right up to the day they retire.

Who’s in PPS 1987

If you joined the police before 6 April 2006 and didn’t opt out, you were enrolled in PPS 1987 by default. The scheme was set up by the Police Pensions Act 1976 and the Police Pensions Regulations 1987. It’s a statutory unfunded scheme, paid out of central police funding rather than an investment pot.

How 30-year double accrual works

The 1987 scheme accrues at 1/60 of final pay for each of your first 20 years’ pensionable service, then 2/60 for each of years 21 to 30. The maximum is 40/60, two thirds of final pay, after 30 years. So an officer with 30 years’ service gets the same pension as if they’d done 40 ordinary years in a 60ths scheme. This is the “double accrual” feature, and no other public-sector final-salary scheme offers it.

The salary used to calculate the pension is the average pensionable pay for the year ending on the date of retirement, but the previous two pay years are also considered and the best of those three years is used. Overtime and most allowances aren’t pensionable.

When you can take it

PPS 1987 is unusual in not having a single retirement age. You can take an immediate, unreduced pension if you meet either of two service conditions:

• 30 years’ pensionable service, at any age, or
• at least 25 years’ service, and aged 50 or over.

Otherwise, you can take an immediate pension at compulsory retirement age (which used to vary by rank, typically 55 for federated ranks and 60 for senior ranks, before the 2006 reforms). Officers who leave with between 2 and 25 years’ service receive a deferred pension payable from age 60, or earlier on ill-health grounds.

Lump sum traps under PPS 1987

There’s no automatic lump sum. You can commute up to 25% of your pension for a tax-free lump sum if you retire with 30+ years’ service, on or after compulsory retirement age, or on ill-health grounds. Otherwise the lump sum is capped at 2¼ × the gross annual pension.

And here’s the trap. Commutation factors are set by the Government Actuary’s Department and depend on your age. They peak at around 26.6 for officers under 48 years 6 months, and drop each month thereafter. The factor reaches 20 at age 62 years 2 months. Above factor 20, HMRC treats the excess as an unauthorised payment, which carries a 40% unauthorised payments charge plus a 15% scheme sanction charge, both deducted at source by the scheme.

Translation: taking the maximum possible lump sum below age 62 years 2 months has an effective tax cost. Most officers in this position take the maximum tax-free commutation instead, which produces a smaller lump sum but a higher residual pension. There isn’t a universally right answer, the right choice depends on what you’d do with the cash and how long you expect to live. But you do need your administrator to run the numbers both ways before you decide.

What weighted accrual means for transition members

When officers were transitioned out of PPS 1987 into PPS 2015 between 2015 and 2022, the government recognised that a hard stop on 1987 accrual would have lost them future “double accrual” they’d reasonably expected to earn. Weighted accrual is the concession.

For a 1987 transition member with continuity of service who retires with 30 years total service across both schemes, the calculation runs:

1987 pensionable service ÷ 45 × Average Pensionable Pay = Gross Annual 1987 Pension

The 45, rather than 60, reflects the equivalent total accrual at 30 years if everything had been in PPS 1987. So the 1987 service is being scaled up. For officers approaching retirement with 25+ years of pre-2015 service, weighted accrual plus the final-salary link is typically the most valuable element of the whole pension package.

Pension increases and the under-55 freeze

Pensions in payment increase each April in line with CPI under the Pensions (Increase) Act 1971. April 2026’s uplift is 3.8%, based on CPI to September 2025.

One quirk worth knowing: if you draw a non-ill-health, non-survivor PPS 1987 pension under age 55, the indexation is suspended until you reach 55, at which point all the accumulated CPI uplifts are applied in one step, and annual increases continue from then on. Ill-health and survivor pensions get CPI from day one, regardless of age.

This isn’t a loss of the inflation protection, it’s a deferral. But it does mean a 1987 pensioner aged, say, 50, will see their pension flat for five years before it jumps up in line with cumulative inflation at 55. That’s worth budgeting around.

PPS 2006, the New Police Pension Scheme

The 2006 scheme was open to new entrants from 6 April 2006 to 31 March 2015 and closed to active accrual on 1 April 2022. It was a deliberate rebalancing of PPS 1987: longer expected service before full pension, simpler accrual, and an automatic lump sum.

How it accrues

1/70 of final pay for each year of pensionable service, up to a maximum of 35 years. Maximum pension is 35/70, half of final pay. There’s no double accrual. Each year is worth the same.

Final salary is calculated as the better of pensionable pay in the final year of service, or the best 12 months’ pensionable pay in the last three years (revalued). The second route can be useful in periods of high inflation or where pay drops in the final year.

Normal pension age is 55. There’s no actuarial reduction for taking benefits at 55 with full service. Officers leaving with deferred benefits draw them from age 65, the deferred pension age was set higher than the active normal pension age, which is a feature of the 2006 design.

The automatic 4× lump sum

Unlike PPS 1987, the 2006 scheme has an automatic tax-free lump sum equal to 4× the annual pension. You can also exchange (commute) all or part of the lump sum to increase your annual pension, this is “inverse commutation,” and there’s no unauthorised-payment tax issue with PPS 2006 commutation.

So 30 years on £40,000 final pay produces:

• Pension = (30 ÷ 70) × £40,000 = £17,143/year
• Lump sum = 4 × £17,143 = £68,571 tax-free

Survivor benefits

Death-in-service grant is 3× pensionable pay, significantly more than PPS 1987’s 2× grant. Spouse, civil partner or declared cohabiting partner pension is half of the higher-tier ill-health pension that would have been payable on the date of death (death in service) or half of the member’s pension (post-retirement). Payable for life. Crucially, unlike PPS 1987, the 2006 scheme does not stop the survivor pension on remarriage or cohabitation.

PPS 2015, the only scheme accruing benefits today

The 2015 scheme was set up by the Police Pensions Regulations 2015 under the Public Service Pensions Act 2013. It’s a CARE, career average revalued earnings, scheme. Since 1 April 2022 it’s the only scheme accruing benefits for any active officer, regardless of when they joined.

How CARE accrual works

Each scheme year, you build up 1/55.3 of your pensionable earnings as “earned pension.” That figure differs slightly across the UK, 1/55.3 in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, 1/56.1 in Scotland. Pensionable earnings exclude overtime and most non-consolidated allowances.

Earned pension already in the pot gets revalued each year to keep its real value. While you’re in active service, it grows at CPI from the previous September plus 1.25%. So for 2026/27, in-service revaluation is 5.05% (CPI 3.8% + 1.25%). After you leave service, deferred and in-payment pensions move at CPI only. The CPI + 1.25% in-service rate is one of the more generous revaluation rates in UK public-sector pensions.

A constable on £40,000 pensionable pay accrues £40,000 ÷ 55.3 = £723.33 of pension that year. The next April, that £723.33 grows to about £760.36 (assuming 5.05% in-service revaluation), and the new year’s accrual is added on top. After 30 years at average salary £45,000 with consistent pay growth, you’d typically retire with somewhere around £24,000-£28,000 of CARE pension before commutation. That’s a strong outcome, and lower than what 1987 scheme members come out with on the same career length, which is exactly the trade-off the 2015 reforms were designed to make.

When you can retire

Normal pension age is 60. That’s significantly lower than NHS, Teachers’, Civil Service or LGPS, where NPA is linked to State Pension Age. The early NPA reflects the physical demands of policing.

You can take the 2015 pension early from age 55, with an actuarial reduction of around 20% for taking it five years early (the precise figure depends on the rules in force at the time). Below 55, the only access route is ill-health retirement. Late retirement past NPA brings an actuarial uplift.

There’s a “buy-out” option at retirement: you can pay a one-off lump sum to remove the early-retirement reduction at 55. Whether it’s worth doing depends on your remaining life expectancy and your tax position; not many people use it.

Commutation in the 2015 scheme

There’s no automatic lump sum. You can commute up to 25% of your pension at the fixed rate of £12 of lump sum for every £1 of annual pension you give up. Unlike PPS 1987, this is a flat rate that doesn’t change with age, and there’s no unauthorised-payment risk on the maximum commutation.

You can also buy added pension by lump sum or regular contributions, subject to per-scheme-year limits. Added pension is revalued in line with CPI in service. There’s no equivalent of the Armed Forces “Faster Accrual” option, police members can’t pay extra contributions to accrue at a higher rate per year of service.

McCloud, what it actually means for police officers

If you’ve heard the word McCloud and felt your eyes glaze over, you’re not alone. Here’s the practical version. Most police officers who served between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 are now in scope of the McCloud remedy, and the broad effect is that pre-2022 service has been shifted back into the legacy scheme, with a choice still to be made at retirement. There’s a fuller cross-scheme treatment in our McCloud Remedy explainer; this section focuses on what’s specifically different for police.

Who’s in scope

You are in scope if you were:

• an active member of PPS 1987 or PPS 2006 on 31 March 2012, and
• an active member of any police pension scheme during any part of 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 (the “remedy period”).

That includes officers who fully transitioned to PPS 2015 in 2015, those with tapered protection who moved later, and those with full protection who stayed in their legacy scheme. Officers who first joined the police on or after 1 April 2012 are not in scope.

What happened on 1 October 2023

All in-scope members had their service during the remedy period administratively moved back into their legacy scheme, PPS 1987 or PPS 2006, depending on which they were in immediately before transitioning to 2015. For the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, you’re now treated as if you’d remained in your legacy scheme throughout. From 1 April 2022 onwards, everyone is in PPS 2015. You don’t need to do anything for this rollback, it’s been applied to your record automatically.

The deferred choice you’ll make at retirement

At the point you actually retire, you get a choice. You can keep the rolled-back legacy benefits (PPS 1987 or PPS 2006) for the remedy period, or you can take 2015 (CARE) benefits for that period instead. The choice covers the whole remedy period, you can’t mix and match.

The choice happens at retirement, not now, because what’s optimal depends on circumstances and pay levels that may not be settled until you actually retire. The legislation calls this the Deferred Choice Underpin (DCU). Members who’d already retired before 1 October 2023 (or beneficiaries of members who’d died before then) made an “immediate choice” within 12 months of receiving their statement, with their pension adjusted retrospectively.

Contribution adjustments, money owed both ways

Contribution rates differed between the schemes during the remedy period, so members owe money in one direction or the other:

• If your service has been rolled back into PPS 1987, the contribution rate (14.25%) was higher than what you actually paid in PPS 2015. You owe the scheme additional contributions for the remedy period (less tax relief, plus interest).
• If your service has been rolled back into PPS 2006, the contribution rate (11%) was lower than what you actually paid in PPS 2015. You’re owed a refund of overpaid contributions (less tax relief, plus interest).

You can settle these adjustments within 12 weeks of receiving your Remediable Service Statement, or wait until retirement and have them netted off your lump sum or pension. There’s no obviously right answer, it depends on your tax position, your interest rate, and how comfortable you are letting the scheme carry the balance.

Why your RSS might be late

The Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 required scheme managers to issue every in-scope member with a Remediable Service Statement by 31 March 2025. In practice, police pension administrators have struggled to meet that deadline.

Police pensions are administered separately by each of the 43 territorial forces in England and Wales, with day-to-day administration mostly contracted out to specialist firms, XPS Pensions Group, Local Pensions Partnership Administration (LPPA), Equiniti, MyCSP, Sopra Steria’s SSCL business, and several in-house teams. The NPCC’s police pension information site publishes the current administrator list. Each administrator has its own data quality, its own automation, and its own backlog. LPPA aimed for 90% of active member statements and 75% of deferred statements by 31 March 2025, with outstanding ones targeted for October 2025. Other administrators have run phased rollouts, prioritising pensioners and ill-health retirees first. The Pensions Regulator is overseeing performance against the legal deadlines.

If yours hasn’t arrived, don’t panic, but it’s reasonable to ask your force’s pension administrator where your statement is in the queue. While you’re waiting, you can keep an eye on your annual benefit statement (which now includes a remediable service comparison alongside).

Ill-health retirement and police injury benefits

Police pensions have two distinct ill-health regimes that often get confused. The first is the ill-health pension that comes out of the pension scheme itself, payable when you’re permanently medically unfit to continue serving. The second is a separate compensation regime, the Police Injury Benefit Regulations, which pays additional, tax-free awards when the disability was caused or substantially contributed to by an injury received on duty.

These are separate, and they can run in parallel. The injury benefit isn’t a pension contribution-funded benefit; it sits outside the pension scheme entirely.

Two tiers of ill-health pension under PPS 2015

The 2015 scheme runs a two-tier ill-health structure based on your ability to work. The Police Pension Authority (the chief officer or scheme manager for your force) decides which tier applies, after referring medical questions to a Selected Medical Practitioner, an SMP.

Lower-tier ill-health pension applies if you’re permanently medically unfit for the ordinary duties of a police officer. Minimum qualifying service is 2 years. The pension is calculated as your standard accrued pension to the date of retirement, with no actuarial reduction for early payment.

Enhanced upper-tier ill-health pension applies if you’re permanently medically unfit for any regular employment, defined as paid work for at least 30 hours a week sustained over 52 weeks. It’s paid in addition to the lower-tier and is calculated as: pensionable earnings ÷ 55.3 × (60 − age at retirement) ÷ 2.

So for an officer aged 30 on £30,000 pensionable pay, the upper-tier enhancement is £30,000 ÷ 55.3 × (60 − 30) ÷ 2 = around £8,100 a year, on top of the lower-tier pension based on actual accrued service.

Lower-tier pensions can be reviewed periodically until normal pension age. If the SMP decides the medical unfitness has ceased, the pension stops and the officer can be required to rejoin. If a lower-tier recipient’s condition worsens within 5 years (longer for progressive conditions), they can be reassessed for upper-tier.

Police injury benefits, separate from the pension

If your disability was caused or substantially contributed to by an injury received in the execution of duty, you can also claim under the Police (Injury Benefit) Regulations 2006. This is an entirely separate tax-free compensation regime, and it can be paid alongside an ill-health pension.

Regulation 11, the standard award, pays a two-part benefit based on your degree of disablement, assessed by the SMP and placed into one of four bands:

• Band 1, up to 25% (slight disablement)
• Band 2, more than 25% up to 50% (minor)
• Band 3, more than 50% up to 75% (major)
• Band 4, more than 75% (very severe)

The award has two components: a one-off tax-free gratuity calculated by reference to band, average pensionable pay and length of service; and an injury pension payable for life, increased annually by CPI. The injury pension is reduced by ¾ of any retirement pension also payable, and by certain DWP benefits paid for the same injury. Once awarded, an injury pension can’t be revoked, even if your degree of disablement is later reassessed at 0%, the pension stays in payment at Band 1 rates.

Regulation 12, the underused gratuity

This is the bit a lot of officers don’t know about. Regulation 12 of the same Injury Benefit Regulations provides a separate, larger one-off gratuity for officers who become totally and permanently disabled as a result of a duty injury, provided the disablement arises within 12 months of the injury (the so-called “12-month condition”).

The Regulation 12 gratuity is the lesser of: 5× annual pensionable pay on the last day of service; or 4× total remuneration in the 12 months ending on the last day of service plus aggregate pension contributions.

For an officer on £35,000 final pay, that’s potentially up to £175,000 tax-free, separate from any retirement pension or Regulation 11 injury pension. The Regulation 12 gratuity is rarely awarded and historically under-used, the Injury on Duty Pensioners Association (IODPA) has campaigned for years to raise awareness of the entitlement, with some success.

Survivor and dependants’ benefits

Survivor pensions across the three schemes share a common shape but differ in the calculation basis. PPS 1987 pays half of the member’s gross pre-commutation pension, but stops on remarriage, cohabitation or new civil partnership (the legacy rule). PPS 2006 and PPS 2015 each pay half of the higher-tier or upper-tier ill-health pension that would have been payable on the date of death (death in service) or half of the member’s pension (post-retirement), and crucially, both 2006 and 2015 keep paying for life regardless of remarriage.

The 2006 and 2015 schemes also allow a nominated cohabiting partner to qualify, provided the relationship is exclusive and ongoing, neither party is married or in another civil partnership, and there’s financial interdependency. The big practical step here is filing a partner declaration form with your scheme manager. Without one, your partner may struggle to demonstrate eligibility after you’re gone. PPS 1987 doesn’t generally allow nominated cohabiting partners, it requires a spouse or civil partner.

Each eligible child gets 25% of the member’s pension (capped at 50% combined across all children regardless of how many). Children’s pensions run to age 18, or 23 if in full-time education or vocational training. Permanently disabled children may receive the pension for life. Lump-sum death-in-service grants are 2× pensionable pay under PPS 1987 and 3× pensionable pay under PPS 2006 and PPS 2015.

Annual Allowance and tax, when it bites

The Annual Allowance limits how much pension growth can be sheltered from tax in a single tax year. For 2026/27 the standard Annual Allowance is £60,000. The threshold income limit for the tapered AA is £200,000, with adjusted income above £260,000 reducing the AA pound-for-pound by 50p, down to a minimum tapered AA of £10,000.

Police officers most likely to bump into AA charges are those with significant pre-2015 service who get a meaningful pay rise late in career, a promotion to chief inspector or above shortly before retirement is the classic trigger, because the final-salary link drives a substantial Pension Input Amount in that year. CARE accrual under PPS 2015 can also produce sizeable input amounts in years with a high CPI plus pay-growth combination, because of the CPI + 1.25% in-service revaluation.

If you face an AA tax charge of £2,000 or more in a year, mandatory Scheme Pays lets you require the scheme to pay the charge in exchange for a permanent reduction in your pension. Voluntary Scheme Pays applies for smaller charges. The facility is available across PPS 1987, PPS 2006 and PPS 2015 with some quirks for transition members.

The Lifetime Allowance was abolished from 6 April 2024 and replaced with two new caps: a Lump Sum Allowance of £268,275 (capping tax-free lump sums) and a Lump Sum and Death Benefit Allowance of £1,073,100 (capping tax-free lump sums plus death benefits). Officers retiring with very high commutation lump sums, typically those with 30+ years of PPS 1987 service plus added pension and other pensions in payment, can occasionally bump against the LSA.

The McCloud rollback added another layer of tax complexity. The AA position for the remedy period is recalculated on the legacy scheme basis from 1 October 2023, and final tax positions are settled at retirement once you’ve made your deferred choice. Where this has created an AA charge that wouldn’t have applied otherwise, HMRC has a public service pension adjustment process you can use to settle it.

Scotland and Northern Ireland, what’s different

Police pensions in Scotland are administered centrally by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) on behalf of the Scottish Government. There are three Scottish schemes that broadly mirror the E&W ones in shape, but with some structural differences worth knowing about:

• 2015 accrual rate is 1/56.1 (vs 1/55.3 in E&W).
• Member contribution is a flat 13.7% regardless of pay (vs the new tiered 12.88% / 13.88% / 14.22%). A Scottish constable on £40,000 pays exactly the same percentage as an Assistant Chief Constable on £140,000.
• Employer contribution is 38.7% (vs 35.3% in E&W).
• One central administrator (SPPA) instead of 43 separate force administrators.

SPPA reported in early 2026 that they had issued around 121,000 of 215,000 RSSs needed and were aiming to complete the bulk by the end of 2026, broadly tracking the E&W rollout pace.

In Northern Ireland, police pension policy is devolved to the Department of Justice. The schemes are administered by the Northern Ireland Policing Board as scheme manager, with day-to-day administration delegated to PSNI Pensions Branch at Lisnasharragh. The Northern Irish version of the legacy scheme is referred to as the 1988 scheme rather than the 1987 scheme, the rules are broadly the same but the regulation dates differ. The 2007 NI scheme corresponds to the 2006 E&W scheme. The 2015 NI scheme matches the 2015 E&W one in shape.

Police staff (civilian employees, comms, custody, intelligence analysts) are not in the police pension scheme. They’re typically members of the Local Government Pension Scheme, see our LGPS guide for that. Special constables and police cadets are not pensionable, their service does not count.

A worked example, what 30 years actually looks like

Picture an officer who joined in 1996 at age 25, served continuously through the 2015 reforms, and retires in 2026 at age 55 with 30 years’ total pensionable service. Final pensionable pay £55,000.

Until McCloud, this officer’s record looked like this: 19 years of PPS 1987 service (1996 to 2015), 7 years of PPS 2015 service (2015 to 2022), and 4 years of PPS 2015 service (2022 to 2026). Post-McCloud rollback, the 2015 to 2022 segment has been put back into PPS 1987 by default, so on default settings the picture is now: 26 years of PPS 1987 service plus 4 years of PPS 2015 service.

Under weighted accrual, the 1987 portion at 30 years total is calculated as 26 ÷ 45 × £55,000 = £31,778 a year. On top of that there’s the 2015 CARE pension built up between 2022 and 2026, call it around £4,000 a year, depending on actual pay and revaluation in those years.

So this officer is looking at roughly £35,778 a year in default-rolled-back legacy benefits, before commutation, plus a deferred choice that could swap the 2015 to 2022 segment for CARE benefits if that turns out to pay more (it usually won’t for this kind of profile, but the comparison statement will show both numbers). Add in a typical maximum tax-free commutation under the 1987 rules and they’d be looking at a six-figure tax-free lump sum at retirement, with a residual pension materially higher than what the same career would have produced under the 2015 scheme alone. That’s the McCloud rollback doing its job.

The numbers above are illustrative and rounded. The actual figures depend on factors specific to the individual that only your administrator can compute, exact dates of joining and reform-period transitions, pensionable allowances, any added pension purchases, partnership declarations, and the specific commutation factor that applies. Don’t make decisions based on a worked example. Make them based on your own quote from your administrator, ideally checked by a regulated adviser.

Things people often misunderstand

“I should opt out, the contributions are too high”

For most officers, opting out is a poor financial decision, even at the higher 2026 contribution rates. You lose the in-service revaluation of CPI + 1.25%, the upper-tier ill-health protection, the 3× pensionable-pay death-in-service grant, and the employer contribution of 35.3% (Scotland 38.7%) that’s funding the bulk of the pension. For 1987 transition members under 50 with less than 25 years’ service, opting out also stops weighted accrual from that point. The exceptions are typically very high earners hitting AA limits, and even there, the right answer is usually Scheme Pays rather than opt-out.

“I’ll take the maximum lump sum because the cash is useful”

Under PPS 1987, taking the absolute maximum lump sum below age 62 years 2 months is genuinely worse than taking the maximum tax-free lump sum, because the excess attracts a 40% unauthorised payments charge plus a 15% scheme sanction charge. Many officers don’t realise this until their administrator runs both options. Always ask for the comparison.

“My partner doesn’t need a declaration form, we’ve been together for years”

For PPS 2006 and PPS 2015 cohabiting-partner survivor pensions, a completed partner declaration form on file with your scheme manager is the practical mechanism. Without it, your partner can in principle still demonstrate eligibility, but they’ll be doing it by argument and evidence at the worst possible time. File the form. It takes ten minutes and removes a real source of risk.

“I have to pick legacy or 2015 now”

You don’t. The whole point of the deferred choice is that the choice happens at retirement. Until then, the rolled-back legacy position is your default. Your annual benefit statement should now show that default alongside a 2015 alternative, so you can see the gap evolving. The choice itself isn’t due until you actually draw your pension.