Teaching union demands action over 'failing' pension scheme

With members across England and Wales, the Teachers' Pension Scheme is one of the largest retirement schemes in the UK.

Although day-to-day operations are outsourced to Capita, the DfE has overall responsibility for the scheme.

But in a letter seen by Money Box the NAHT said it had "serious concerns" about how it was being run, including significant delays for members being paid their pensions.

The letter also cited excessive waiting times for members trying to get through on the phone, poor communication from pension scheme staff, and unanswered and unresolved queries and complaints.

Describing its members as "deeply dissatisfied", the union's assistant general secretary James Bowen said it was clear the Teachers' Pension Scheme was failing teachers and school leaders.

"It's just frankly not good enough," he said, adding that the department and the pension scheme needed to "get to grips" with the problems and accelerate resolving some of the queries.

"I think we need to see some strong leadership within the Department for Education and within the Teachers' Pension Scheme," he said.

"Probably the only other solution is to put some more capacity into that team so it can cope with the demand that appears, at the moment, to be overwhelming them."

The NAHT's Mr Bowen said he believed a lot of the problems stemmed from a legal judgement in 2018, which found that younger members of government schemes were effectively discriminated against.

That judgement led to the government changing public service pension schemes, including the way pension valuations were calculated.

In March, Teachers' Pensions - which runs the Teachers' Pension Scheme - said it had been waiting for that government guidance, and it had taken "a long time to agree for consistency [across all public service pension schemes] and to ensure calculations don't need to be revisited".

Mr Bowen said: "I've no doubt that is a huge part of [these delays] but I don't think it explains it all.

"I think probably there is also a shortage of capacity there as well and those two things combined are probably creating the situation we find ourselves in now."

In a statement, the DfE said: "We understand that this has caused frustration and are continuing to work closely with Teachers' Pensions to resolve this issue as soon as possible," adding that people can check the TPS website for updates.

Capita apologised for the delays and said active discussions were continuing to address the increase in the number of enquiries being made to Teachers' Pensions.