Sargeant remedy

What is the Sargeant Remedy?

When the Government reformed public service pension schemes in 2014 and 2015 they introduced protections for older members. In December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that younger members of the Judges and Firefighters' Pension schemes had been discriminated against because the protections implemented didn't apply to them.

After a number of further court cases and appeals going as far as an application to the Supreme Court, the Government accepted that discrimination had been found and committed to make changes to all main public sector schemes to remove it. This ruling is often called the 'McCloud or Sargeant judgment' after the names of the people who brought the Judges and Firefighters' cases.

How is it being remedied?

The challenge the Government has faced is that none of the public sector schemes have identical rules or introduced their new schemes in the same way, or indeed at the same time.

The process to implement remedy is complicated and requires changes to our administration software. This will take time to do and we are working with our provider to do it as soon as possible.

Not all members are affected by remedy. Members that are eligible to make choices for the remedy period must:

have been in pensionable service on or before 31 March 2012; and
had pensionable service between 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 (the remedy period); and
not have a gap in service of 5 years or more (known as a disqualifying break).

Pensionable service does not have to have been in the firefighters’ pension scheme, it could also have been in another relevant public service pension scheme i.e. NHS, Teachers or Local Government. You can read more about this in the Remedy FAQs at the bottom of this page.

Active members

If you are in scope for remedy you will be able to choose whether you want to receive your former scheme pension or new scheme pension for the remedy period at the point you retire. This is called Deferred Choice Underpin.

We have now produced and issued over 90% of all 2025 ABS and ABS-RSS (Annual Benefit Statement Remediable Service Statement). For more information about your ABS-RSS please see the statements page here.

Your record on My Pension should now show your legacy scheme for the remedy period (unless we haven't been able to produce a statement for you). All active members are now in FPS 2015 from 1 April 2022.

If you have not received a 2024 or 2025 ABS-RSS it means that we have not been able to produce it in our bulk production run. We are working through these cases manually and sending them individually as they are produced. This work will continue into early 2026.

To read all about the Remedy and to understand if you are in scope visit the national member FPS website here.

Deferred members

We didn't produce any 2024 DBS-RSS. We have decided to move on to the 2025 statements instead so members get the most recent benefit information.

We will begin producing 2025 Deferred Benefit Statement - Remediable Service Statements (DBS-RSS) in late October / November 2025 and we will tell you when your statement is available to view online.

Deferred members who are out-of-scope for remedy have a different production schedule which you can read about here.

Pensioner members

In August we wrote to members and promised to keep them updated regarding the progress made to issue them with an ‘Immediate Choice - Remediable Service Statement’ (IC-RSS) so they can choose their post-Remedy benefits.

We still cannot give a specific date for completion of this project and can only say that we are committed to providing all members with an IC-RSS as soon as we possibly can.

These complex adjustments cannot be automated and we’re using staff with specialist knowledge to look at each case manually. We have been trying to put more resources into this project by taking staff from other work areas, and we have started to clear more cases.

Payment of benefits

Where we have received a member’s IC-RSS decision we are paying any lump sum due within a few days and updating the pension on the next available payroll.

We continue to work with our software provider to try and develop a bulk calculation for some types of cases. There is no guarantee at this time that a bulk calculation will be available. If it is this will enable the remaining cases to be completed sooner. If or when a bulk calculation becomes available we will let you know and also provide some more specific time frames to calculate and send statements.

Any resulting adjustment to members pensions will be backdated and all arrears paid, along with interest paid the relevant rate of the scheme.

We will continue to keep this page updated.

To read all about the remedy and to understand if you are in scope visit the national member FPS website here.

The LGA have also produced two videos giving a summary of remedy which you may find useful. You can watch them on their website here along with the latest remedy FAQs too.

Page updated 17 October 2025

Useful links