Civil Service Pension

Veeno1_123

Thank you for your comments and help.
Is it possible to reclaim what I actually thought I signed up to as this was certainly not the position I wanted to be in (Hence joining the service)?

JoeCrystal

No, the responsibility and onus of checking the schemes are on you solely. You have plenty and plenty of opportunities to change over or check your pension provisions for the last eighteen years. You must have known that you are in a DC pension scheme since you get an annual statement with your pot value.

 You are still in a very fortunate position to access the generous pension scheme, so switch over to Alpha  Civil Service Pension Scheme ASAP and look into improving your pension provision with that scheme, such as Added pension and EPA. Considering how exceedingly generous Employer contributions are, you already built up a pretty good DC pension fund, which you can use to bridge the gap!

As kuratowski already pointed out, you probably got the best of both worlds potentially. So do the research and switch over ASAP if you wish to do so.