Pension not paid or transferred

fruityboots31

Adice please. I have been a teacher sine 1999. In 2011 I moved from Scotland and filled in pension transfer forms to transfer my service to English teacher pension scheme. Now moving back to Scotland and have discovered 2 things. Firstly my pension was never transferred, secondly despite paying my pension every month my employer has not paid into the TPS and they have no record of me. Employer trying to remedy this. Do I have any rights in relation to all this?

jamesd

You have lots of rights but the first one that matters is that they get to sort out the mess. Give them a few months, it'll take work and money from them to sort it out. The obligation of your employer is essentially to put you into the same position that you would have been in if they had done things correctly.

xylophone

http://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/

And if you want the calculations checked on your behalf, it seems to me that the Scheme should pay for an independent actuary?

http://www.actuaries.org.uk/research-and-resources/find-actuarial-firm

fruityboots31

Thank you for those links.

jem16

xylophone wrote: »

http://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/

And if you want the calculations checked on your behalf, it seems to me that the Scheme should pay for an independent actuary?

http://www.actuaries.org.uk/research-and-resources/find-actuarial-firm

I wouldn't have thought it would need any calculations as it should surely be a matter of the OP being provided with the appropriate years of service from his/her years in England - around 3 years or so. Once that's done s/he could then transfer it.

If the Scottish service was never transferred it should still be in the Scottish Teachers' Scheme which can be checked out by contacting the SPPA or even signing up for My Pension Online.

http://www.sppa.gov.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63&Itemid=5

OP presumably you have rejoined the Scottish scheme? As it's less than 5 years of a break you should be able to rejoin the original scheme with the age 60 retirement.

xylophone

I wouldn't have thought it would need any calculations as it should surely be a matter of the OP being provided with the appropriate years of service from his/her years in England - around 3 years or so.

Possibly (even probably) not - but then, if scheme administration were infallibly correct, the OP would not be in his current situation......:eek:

jem16

xylophone wrote: »

Possibly (even probably) not - but then, if scheme administration were infallibly correct, the OP would not be in his current situation......:eek:

Seems to be two issues involved;

1. The employer - ie local council presumably - did not pay the OP's contributions to the TPS. Why not?

2. The transfer from Scottish scheme to English scheme didn't happen. Again why not and why did the OP not follow it up at the time?

xylophone

Clearly, only the administrators can supply definitive answers but I am wondering whether the contributions were paid to another person's pension.

As to why the OP didn't raise a query, I imagine that when he saw on his salary statements that contributions were being paid, he simply assumed that all was well....

jem16

xylophone wrote: »

Clearly, only the administrators can supply definitive answers but I am wondering whether the contributions were paid to another person's pension.

Anything's possible.

As to why the OP didn't raise a query, I imagine that when he saw on his salary statements that contributions were being paid, he simply assumed that all was well....

If I was transferring 13 years worth of service from the Scottish scheme to the English scheme I would be following it through for that purpose in particular.

As to the contributions to the TPS you would normally get an annual statement so after 3 years I would have been wondering why I never got one.

Now hopefully it will all get sorted eventually but could have been avoided.