McCloud Remedy

Here is a brief reminder of some of the background to the McCloud Remedy together with Fife Pension Fund's current position.

• The background is that age discrimination was embedded in pensions legislation made by the coalition government back in 2015, then subsequently amended to remove that discrimination.

Fife Pension Fund’s role is to implement the Remedy which cancels out the effects of the discrimination.

It's a huge administrative task, though in reality the vast majority of members will see no change to their pension.

• There are approximately 11,000 Fife Pension Fund member records "in scope" i.e. all the members who contributed to the scheme during the Remedy Period: 01.04.2015 to 31.03.2022.

But for most of them the new scheme will provide better benefits than the old scheme, so the "underpin" protection provided by the McCloud Remedy will have no actual effect - though it is a useful safety net.

• A breach of the regulations in 2024 was voluntarily reported by Fife Pension Fund to the Pensions Regulator.

It was a technical breach (by all Scottish LGPS funds) and occurred because the regulations required information about the McCloud Remedy to be provided to members before it was possible to do that - i.e. before the necessary guidance had been published and the system re-programmed.

The breach was subsequently extinguished by retrospective changes to the regulations.

• For the 2025 annual benefit statements exercise, Fife Pension Fund utilised the dispensation provided by the SPPA that permitted the omission of the McCloud underpin in this year’s statements. All active and deferred members were made aware of this in subsequent communications.

All statements were issued by the statutory deadline of 31 August.

We are continuing to work through numerous queries that have been found in connection with McCloud and making the required adjustments to member records that will ensure compliance going forward.

However, McCloud rectification is a constantly moving picture as salary and other changes can have retrospective effect meaning records need to be continually reassessed.

• During the lengthy period over which the McCloud remedy has run, we have tried to ensure that members have been kept informed with developments and where we are with our implementation of the remedy.

More information is available on the Fife Pension Fund website – www.fifepensionfund.org