Membership and contributions

Membership

For information about how your benefits are worked out when you retire see "How a CARE Scheme works”.

What happens if I am absent?

There may be times when you are absent from work and you don’t pay your Local Government Pension Scheme contributions. The absence could be for a number of reasons such as:

you have a period of authorised unpaid leave
you have a period of unpaid additional child-related leave
you take industrial action (strike)

If you do not pay contributions for a period of absence as noted above you will lose accrued pension for this period. However, it is possible to buy this ‘lost’ pension by paying for Additional Pension Contributions (APCs).

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For more information please contact your Employer or visit the LGPS apc modeller.

Contributions

How much do I pay?

How much you pay depends on how much you are paid and the pay band you fall into.

If you work part-time or term time, your rate is based on the actual rate of pay for your job(s), so you only pay contributions on the pay you actually earn per job.

The pay bands that apply from April 2024 are below:

	You pay a contribution rate of:
If your actual pensionable pay is:	Main section	50/50 section
Up to £17,600	5.5%	2.75%
£17,601 to £27,600	5.8%	2.90%
£27,601 to £44,900	6.5%	3.25%
£44,901 to £56,800	6.8%	3.40%
£56,801 to £79,700	8.5%	4.25%
£79,701 to £112,900	9.9%	4.95%
£112,901 to £133,100	10.5%	5.25%
£133,101 to £199,700	11.4%	5.70%
£199,701 or more	12.5%	6.25%

The contribution rates and / or pay bands in this table will be reviewed periodically and may change in the future.

Click here to see more information about the 50/50 section.

Example

Jenny works full time, and her pay is £23,000 a year, this means she will pay 5.80% of £23,000. This works out at £111.17 a month (before tax relief). If she worked part time (half the hours) she would only pay £52.71 a month (before tax relief) which is 5.5% of her £11,500 pay.

How can I increase my pension?

You can pay more to top up your pension.

There are two ways you can currently increase your pension from the Scheme.

Buying extra pension, you can elect to buy additional pension by taking out an Additional Pension Contribution (APC) contract in order to buy extra LGPS pension. You can buy extra pension by paying APCs regularly, over a period of time, or you can buy extra pension by paying in a one-off lump sum. The amount it costs to buy extra pension depends on how much pension you want to buy, the age you are when you start paying the extra contributions and the length of time you want to pay them for. There is a maximum amount of additional pension that you can buy that is indexed each year in line with the cost of living. Further details, including an online calculator which will produce quotes for the cost of any purchase, can be found on the national LGPS Member website. You should use the online calculator to find a purchase that is right for you. For more information on how to buy an APC please read the factsheet or contact us.

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Paying Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVCs). This is an in-house option offered through Prudential. To visit the Prudential website click here.

There are limits on the amount of extra contributions you can pay. To find out more please see our factsheets or contact us.

To see how additional contributions may affect your Annual Allowance limit please use the HMRC calculator using this link. You will need details of your benefit which can be found on your benefit statement or contact us.