Final wage, additional pension payment advice please

Albermarle

If I can ask another follow up question; what would one do with a personal pension of £15,000?

You can withdraw from it when you reach 55, although this increases to 57 in about 3 years time.
25% of it is tax free and 75% is taxable income.
However whether you pay any tax on it or not will depend on any other taxable income you have at the time.

Or you could leave it alone until later, just like any other investment/ savings account.

Asimovs_nightfall

Thanks for all the helpful comments.  I need to chat with our own pensions department and maybe USS to clarify and then can utilise your very useful advice.

Cobbler_tone

As a sidenote I saw that a lot of these Uni VS schemes are dealt with as compromise agreements, i.e. needing to be signed off by a solicitor, which the uni's are funding.
Could well be common place but it was new to me. I'm used to good old fashioned redundancy, voluntary or otherwise. 
Seems a bizarre way to do business and there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought behind selection. e.g. a whole department could leave. They must be in a proper mess.
Fast forward 12 months "Who used to do that?"...."Oh, they all left."