THE POA has joined the FBU, PCS and GMB in a Legal Challenge to ‘stop the looting of their pensions!’
The POA, along with the FBU, PCS and GMB, yesterday filed court proceedings regarding the government’s withholding of improved pension benefits arising from the Pensions Cost Cap from thousands of POA members and hundreds of thousands of public service workers.
The POA, as an interested party, and the other unions say that the government is in breach of the Pensions Cost Cap recommended by the Public Services Pensions Commission and adopted by government, as the costs have fallen below the threshold and the savings have not been used to the benefit of members.
The latest valuation in 2016 demonstrated that the costs of the scheme were below the predetermined level and that from April 2019, the benefits for thousands of scheme members should have been improved.
However, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, announced in January 2019 that the process of implementing these improved benefits would be ‘paused’ until the government digested the consequences of an earlier age discrimination case of the pre-April 2015 schemes, which the government had lost.
Steve Gillan, the General Secretary of the POA, stated: ‘The government have continually failed to listen to our concerns regarding pensions.
‘In a Pension Scheme that was imposed on our members, government have been found to have been discriminatory against some of them in a court of law.
‘We are now pleased to be taking this legal action regarding the pension cap and we are happy to support the FBU, as an interested party, alongside the PCS and the GMB.’
Mark Fairhurst, the National Chairman of the POA stated: ‘We are fed up with the government’s platitudes about how grateful they are to public sector workers during National Emergencies, but then continue to deny us what is rightfully ours in relation to excessive pension contributions.
‘They need to stop looting from our pension pots and repay what they owe to our members.’
