Situation still far from clear for part-timers –
European Court of Justice decision on Preston Case

Does this apply to you?

• Are you a member of the LGPS?
• At any time while you worked for your current employer have you been kept out of the pension scheme because you worked part time?
  
  If you answered YES to both those questions, read on.

Recently there has been a case heard in the European Court of Justice that may eventually give you the chance to backdate your LGPS membership for the period you were kept out. But before that can happen, 2 other things must happen:

• The ECJ decision was handed back to the House of Lords – they will have to decide how to implement the decision;
• The Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), who are responsible for the LGPS's legal scheme rules, will have to decide how the rules need to change to incorporate the House of Lords decisions.

It might be a while before these 2 things are completed.
Keep checking this site – we'll keep you informed.

Have you left an LGPS employer recently? Or are you expecting to leave soon?

If you have left recently, or you will be leaving soon, the Local Government Pension Committee of the Employers' Organization suggests that you lodge a claim with the Employment Tribunal.
You can get an Employment Tribunal claim form from your local Department of Employment Office.

Claim forms are not available from WYPF.

Background to the Preston Case

In the 1970's, most job-related pension schemes only let full-time workers join.

Now, as a general rule, pension schemes are open to virtually all employees.

Opening up pension schemes has been helped over the years by quite a few important European Court cases.
The Preston Case followed a 1995 European Court ruling that judged membership of an occupational pension scheme a right that should not be withheld from part-time workers. This became a sex discrimination case because the majority of part-time workers are women.

A number of workers made claims in the courts for periods of part-time work undertaken before the 1995 ruling. But the courts held that UK law imposed a 2 year limitation on backdating.

Shirley Preston & others v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust and Dorothy Fletcher and others v Midland Bank challenged this 2 year limit.

The recent ECJ judgement held the 2 year limitation to be unlawful, but handed the judgement back to the House of Lords to decide how the judgement should be put into effect. (Really the ECJ judgement only answered some questions that the House of Lords referred to it.)

Speculation in the media has suggested that part-timers' membership could be backdated as far back as 8 April 1976 when an earlier ECJ decision ruled that equal pay for men and women was enforcable under EU law.

But the situation may not be as straightforward as the media has made out, because:

• Part-timers will have to show that there are equivalent full-timers of the opposite sex with proprtionately higher benefits. Otherwise, there is no discrimination; AND
• Backdated contributions have to be paid. And the ECJ ruling allows our courts (if they end up hearing any of these cases) to apply the British limitation period of 6 years on this.

Implementing the ruling in the Local Government Pension Scheme may cause some difficulties too because:

• People working 15 hours or more have been able to join the LGPS since 1986. And in 1991 these people were also given the option to "buy back" service between 1974 and 1986.
• People working less than 15 hours have been eligible to join from 1993.