local govt final salary pensions

Derek49

My wife and I are both retired from working for a local council here in Scotland and are drawing both state pensions and council pensions. We still have a mortgage and wonder whether either of us would be able withdraw any of our pension pots to allow us to clear our mortgage. My wife's is a small pension (£3500 per year) as she worked for a much shorter time than me, but should I die before her she will still get 50% of my pension which at todays date will work out about £19k per year plus her state pension. Anyone know whether either of us could ask to take all or part of our pension pots as a lump sum from our local government pension. We are both about ten years into drawing the Council pensions (aged 70 and 68) ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

El_Torro

I don't think you can cash in a pension that you have already started drawing from.


Even if you can I think it will probably turn out to be a very bad idea. If you were to cash in a DC pension pot (that you haven't bought an annuity for) only the first 25% would be tax free, the rest would be taxable. So cashing a pension in to pay off a mortgage would be very tax inefficient.


Is your mortgage unmanageable? How long do you have left to pay it off? Is it interest only?

Andy_L

Derek49 wrote: »

Anyone know whether either of us could ask to take all or part of our pension pots as a lump sum from our local government pension. We are both about ten years into drawing the Council pensions (aged 70 and 68)

It's not possible to do this.