What is the 'Matthews second options exercise'?
In 2022, following legal challenges, the Government accepted that retained firefighters should be entitled to claim service going back to the beginning of their employment.
This means a second ‘Matthews’ exercise was needed to allow eligible retained firefighters to buy pension service as a special member of the FPS 2006, backdated to the start date of their employment.
For information about eligibility and to understand more please visit the national member site fpsmember.org here.
Current situation
FRAs have been collecting information, and in some cases payments, from members to buy the pensionable service. This information has then been sent on to us as the scheme administrator. Regrettably we’ve not been able to process the bulk of claims up to now.
Unfortunately, much of the processing work involves manual calculations due to our software not being able to cater for this project. This exercise is also complex in nature and in some cases overlaps with the wider Sargeant Remedy project, adding to the complexity of the task. This is not an excuse for our failure to provide an acceptable service, but it is one of the reasons for the delay.
Importantly, we have now changed how outstanding work is being managed. The steps we have taken are directly informed by previous approaches that did not deliver the improvements we expected.
An Oversight Board has been established, including representatives from the Local Government Association and nominated Scheme Managers from our Fire and Rescue Authority clients. This Board agrees the order in which cases are prioritised, monitors progress, and challenges delays, allowing resources to be focused on completing casework rather than responding to repeated enquiries.
Your Fire and Rescue Authority will receive regular updates on progress from the Oversight Board and WYPF and we will also publish updates on this web page.
Processing cases
We have now set up a special project team and recruited additional skilled resource for this project.
If you have sent in a claim or payment to your FRA please be assured we have received that from them and we are starting to work through the backlog of claims. Only cases received in 2026 have received an acknowledgement however, and we will not be going through the backlog to acknowledge older cases, and we will contact members as we start processing their case.
We'll be working through cases as quickly as we can based on the priority order given to us by the Oversight Board.
As we are at the start of this project we do not know exactly how long it will take to work through the backlog of cases and catch-up, but if you could bear with us until we address your case that would be greatly appreciated. Priority orders and timescales given by the Oversight Board will be published on this page also.
Keeping you up-to-date
We will keep updating this page and we will also give your FRA periodical updates like this that they can share with you.
We sincerely apologise for the continued delays and thank you for your ongoing patience.
Page updated 19 February 2026
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