The McCloud remedy

Why some of your service moved back, and the choice you'll get at retirement.

If you've had correspondence about "remediable service" or a "Remediable Service Statement" and put it to one side, this is what it was about.

What happened

When the 2015 Scheme was introduced, older members were given transitional protection allowing them to stay in their existing section, while younger members were moved across. The courts found that protection discriminated on grounds of age.

The remedy applies across public service pension schemes, not just the NHS, and it affects a very large number of people.

What changed

Service during the remedy period, 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, was rolled back into the member's legacy section, the 1995 or 2008 Section, as though the 2015 Scheme had never applied during that window.

From 1 April 2022 onwards, everyone builds benefits in the 2015 Scheme. That part is settled and no choice affects it.

So if you were in the scheme during that seven-year window, some of your service moved from one place to another without you doing anything.

The choice you'll be offered

This is the part people find confusing, and the answer is reassuring: you don't have to decide now.

When you take your benefits, you'll be given a choice for your remedy period service. Take it as legacy scheme benefits, or take it as 2015 Scheme benefits, whichever produces the better outcome.

This is sometimes called the deferred choice underpin. The point of it is that you decide when you have the information that determines the answer: your actual final pay, your actual retirement age, your actual circumstances.

Members who have already retired, and the dependants of members who have died, are handled separately and have generally been contacted with an immediate choice rather than a deferred one.

Why the answer isn't obvious

For most people the legacy benefits will be better, because final salary accrual with a lower retirement age usually wins. But not always, and the exceptions are real:

Someone whose pay hasn't risen much, where career average revaluation may have done better
Someone working well past their legacy normal pension age
Someone whose annual allowance position differs substantially between the two

That last one isn't trivial. The two options can produce very different pension input amounts for the years in question, and therefore different tax positions.

What it means for your annual allowance

The rollback changed how much pension growth happened in the remedy years, so annual allowance positions for those years were recalculated.

Where that produced a charge that shouldn't have been paid, or one that should have been and wasn't, there are compensation and correction mechanisms. Affected members have generally received revised pension savings statements.

If you paid an annual allowance charge for a year in the remedy period, or used scheme pays for one, it's worth checking whether your position has changed. This is one of the few places where going back through old correspondence genuinely earns the afternoon.

What to actually do

Find your Remediable Service Statement. It sets out your position under both options.

Don't try to decide now. The choice is made at retirement and the information you'd need doesn't exist yet.

Keep the paperwork, along with old pension savings statements and any record of annual allowance charges you paid.

Get advice at retirement rather than before. This is one of the clearest cases on this site for regulated advice at the point of decision. The sums are large, the choice is irreversible, and the answer depends on your specific figures.

This article is for general education only and isn't personal advice. The remedy is intricate, guidance continues to develop, and the NHS Business Services Authority is the authoritative source for your own position.