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Receiving your pension
In this section
Once you retire, you’ll start to receive your pension which will be revalued each year to keep up with inflation.
Were you a member before 2022?
This section gives you details about your pension from the firefighters’ pension scheme 2015. If you also have benefits in one of the other sections of the firefighters’ pension scheme, you should read about the benefits you are receiving from those.
Pension payments
When you get paid
When you choose to retire, you’ll need to let your administrator know which bank account you want your pension to be paid into.
Pension
You will normally start to receive your pension on the next available payroll. You will be given confirmation of when this will be.
Cash lump sum
If you choose to exchange pension for a cash lump sum, this would be paid to you as soon as possible after your retirement date.
Pension increases
Annual reviews
Once your pension is in payment, it will be reviewed each year in line with the Consumer Prices Index - this is a measure of how much the cost of living has changed over the year.
Each year the pension increase is confirmed in legislation - this is called a pensions increase order. Any pension increase gets applied from the first Monday in April each year. You’ll usually be notified about the increase each year by your fire and rescue authority or pension administrator.
If you have recently started to receive your pension, you may not get the full amount of the increase in the first year your pension is in payment to reflect the fact that you have not been a pensioner for the full year.
Pension increases are normally applied to:
- survivor’s and children’s pensions,
- people age 55 or over at the date of the increase
- people who retired on ill health grounds.