Who to ask about a public service pension problem, and what it costs

Almost every article on this site, including this one, ends by telling you to speak to your fund, to MoneyHelper, or to a regulated financial adviser. That is the responsible thing to say. It is also, on its own, close to useless, because it never explains what any of those people actually do, what they cost, or which one fits the problem in front of you.

Worse, a lot of people pay for the wrong one. Public sector pension advice from a regulated adviser is expensive and excellent at one particular job. If your problem is not that job, you can spend a four figure sum and end up exactly where you started. This is how to tell which problem you have.

Start with the question, not the professional

Nearly every pension problem is one of two kinds, and telling them apart is most of the work.

An entitlement question asks what the rules and your record actually give you. What is my normal pension age on this slice of service. Does my break count. Why does the statement I was sent in 1992 say one thing and the portal say another. These have a right answer. It is written in the scheme regulations and in your membership record, and it does not depend on your attitude to risk or your other savings.

A decision question asks what you should do with what you have. When to draw. Whether to exchange pension for a lump sum. Whether to pay AVCs. How this pension fits with everything else you own and what your partner needs. These have no single right answer. They depend on your circumstances, and giving a personal recommendation on them is a regulated activity in the UK.

Entitlement questions: your scheme has to answer, and it is free

Start with your fund or scheme administrator, in writing, and ask a specific question. Most are answered at this stage.

If the answer does not come, or arrives vague, or contradicts something you were told before, you are not stuck and you do not need to buy your way out. Every UK occupational pension scheme must operate an Internal Dispute Resolution Procedure, and it is a statutory two stage process. The reason it works is not that it is aggressive. It is that a stage one decision has to be given in writing and has to refer to the scheme rules it relies on. Somebody has to name the provision and explain why it applies to you, which is very hard to do vaguely.

If that does not resolve it, the Pensions Ombudsman is the next step. Free, determinations binding on the scheme, and normally available once the dispute procedure has been exhausted. Our guide to using the Pensions Ombudsman sets out both stages, the timescales and the three year limit in full, so this article will not repeat them.

It is worth being clear what a paid adviser cannot do here. An adviser can read your paperwork and tell you what they think it means, and a good one may spot something. What they cannot do is compel your scheme to accept it. Only the scheme, and then the Ombudsman, can change what the scheme pays you. Paying for advice on an entitlement dispute buys an opinion, not an outcome.

Decisions: this is what regulated advice is for

Once the facts are settled, what you do with them is a different matter, and this is where an adviser earns a fee. Retiring earlier than planned, commuting pension for cash, coordinating a public service pension with a partner’s, working out the tax on all of it: these turn on your circumstances, and an adviser who takes the time to understand them is doing something no article can.

Note the distinction the rules draw. Guidance explains your options without telling you which to take, and it is free from MoneyHelper. Advice is a personal recommendation, it is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and you pay for it. You can use both, and starting with free guidance to work out whether you need the paid version is a normal thing to do.

What public sector pension advice costs

MoneyHelper publishes typical figures, which is more than most of the industry does. Hourly rates are commonly between £100 and £350. For pension or investment advice, advisers often charge 1 to 3 per cent of the value for initial advice and 0.5 to 1 per cent a year for ongoing advice.

Three things about that are worth knowing before you ring anyone.

• Many advisers give a free first meeting. It is used to understand the problem, scope the work and quote for it. You are entitled to be told the cost before you commit to anything.
• There is no commission on pension advice. Advisers are not permitted to take it, so pension advice is always a fee you can see. If someone suggests otherwise, that is a reason to stop.
• A percentage is not the only way to be charged. Advisers also quote fixed fees for a defined piece of work and hourly rates. For a single contained question, it is entirely reasonable to ask what a fixed fee would be, and to ask what a percentage would actually be a percentage of.

How to check an adviser is genuinely authorised

Use the FCA’s Financial Services Register, at register.fca.org.uk. Check that the adviser or their firm is listed as authorised to give advice, and use the contact details shown on the register rather than ones you have been sent. That second step matters, because impersonating a genuine authorised firm is a standard scam technique.

For finding advisers in the first place, MoneyHelper points to four directories: VouchedFor and Unbiased, which both let you search by advice type and location, the Society of Later Life Advisers, whose members are accredited in later life finances, and the Personal Finance Society. It is also reasonable to ask an adviser directly whether they have handled your specific kind of scheme before. Public service defined benefit pensions are not what most advisers see most days.

One rule with no exceptions: never act on a cold call, text, email or social media approach about your pension, however plausible. Authorised advisers do not find clients that way.

Two free services that probably do not cover you, and one that does

This is the part general pension guidance keeps getting wrong for public service members, because most of it is written for people with a pot rather than a promise. Two of the best known free services are built around defined contribution pensions, and your main scheme benefits are defined benefit.

Pension Wise

A free, impartial, government-backed appointment, delivered by MoneyHelper, either online at any time or booked with a pension specialist. You are eligible if you have a UK-based defined contribution pension and are 50 or over, or if you are under 50 and have inherited someone else’s pension, are retiring early through poor health, or your scheme lets you take your pension before 55. The size of the pot is irrelevant.

What an appointment covers:

• When you can get at your pension pots.
• The different ways you can take money out of them, for example as cash, as a guaranteed income, or drawn flexibly.
• How each of those ways is usually taxed.
• How to spot and avoid scams.

What it does not cover. Your scheme pension itself, which is the thing most public service members actually want to talk about. It will not tell you what your LGPS or NHS or Teachers’ benefits are worth, when you can draw them unreduced, whether the 85-year rule applies to you, or what a break in your membership did. It does not deal with your State Pension either. And because it is guidance rather than advice, it will not tell you which option to choose or make a recommendation, whatever your pension type.

The pensions advice allowance

This lets you take up to 500 pounds out of a pension to pay for regulated retirement advice without the tax charge that would normally apply to taking money early. You can use it once in any tax year and up to three times in total, and there is no age limit on it. The money goes towards the cost of advice from an adviser authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority.

What it does not cover. It applies to defined contribution pensions, and to hybrid arrangements that have a defined contribution element. It does not apply to defined benefit or final salary benefits, so it cannot be taken out of your main public service pension. There is a second catch even where it is available in principle: schemes and providers are not obliged to offer it, so yours may simply not run it.

The one that does: MoneyHelper

Being outside both of those does not leave you with nothing, which is the bit that rarely gets said. MoneyHelper says plainly that it can still help if you are not eligible for Pension Wise, and its written guides and tools are open to everyone whatever kind of pension you hold. It also runs free pension specialists you can actually speak to, on 0800 011 3797, by webchat or through an online form, between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday. That is free, impartial and government-backed, and nobody is going to sell you anything at the end of it.

One caveat worth putting to your provider rather than assuming either way. If you have paid AVCs, that pot is defined contribution even though your main pension is not, which is exactly the hybrid situation the advice allowance rules contemplate. Whether either service is open to you in respect of an AVC pot is a question for your AVC provider and your scheme, and it is worth asking rather than guessing.

When it is actually a solicitor

Occasionally an entitlement question turns on how legislation should be read rather than on what your record says: which savings provision carried an old right forward through a scheme rewrite, or how equalisation law applies to service from a particular era. Those are questions of statutory construction, and they are a pensions solicitor’s work rather than a financial adviser’s.

It is rare, and it is worth exhausting the free dispute route first, because the scheme has to set out its reasoning there and that reasoning is exactly what any lawyer would need to see anyway.

Common questions

Pension Plain’s take

“Speak to a regulated adviser” has become the pensions equivalent of “consult your doctor”. It is said so automatically that it has stopped carrying information, and it quietly assumes the reader’s problem is a decision. Often it is not. A great many public service members are not trying to choose between options at all. They are trying to establish what they were promised, and for that the free statutory route is not the poor relation of paid advice, it is the more powerful tool, because it obliges the other side to show its reasoning.

The advice market is worth its fee for genuine decisions, and this is not an argument against using it. It is an argument for spending five minutes working out which question you actually have first. That five minutes is occasionally worth several thousand pounds.

Related guides

• How to use the Pensions Ombudsman: a guide for public sector scheme members
• UK public sector pensions explained
• AVCs in public sector schemes: are they worth it?

Fact-checked: 18 August 2026