Consultation on Draft Police Pensions (Remediable Service) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2023

Overview

The Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act (PSPJOA) 2022 provide an overarching framework to allow UK-wide public service pension schemes to remedy the impact of unlawful age discrimination (as identified in the McCloud judgement).  This discrimination arose due to certain transitional arrangements put in place when these public service pension schemes (including the police schemes) were reformed between 2014 and 2016.

The first phase of the remedy, (the prospective remedy), brought the age discrimination to an end with the introduction of the Police Pensions (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2022, whereby all active members of the 1988 or 2006 police pension schemes moved to the 2015 scheme on 1 April 2022.

The second phase of the remedy, (the retrospective remedy), is to address the age discrimination that took place between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022.

The Department of Justice are consulting on the Police Pensions (Remediable Service) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2023, to enact the second phase of the remedy in the McCloud/Sargeant cases.

This consultation on the Police Pensions (Remediable Service) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2023 sets out :-

• the background to the second, retrospective, part of the remedy; and
• an explanation of legislative and policy changes required to implement it.

The Department of Justice invites responses from interested parties on the amendments to the draft regulations needed to enact the second phase of the remedy, as set out in the PSPJOA 2022.