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03 September 2025

Pension Newsletter 6

As many of you are aware, there has been progress for some regarding the production of Annual Benefit Statements (ABS) and Remedial Service Statements (RSS) but unfortunately not for all. 

We have made it clear to West Yorkshire Pension Fund that we do not find this acceptable. We want WYPF to ensure all members of the Firefighter Pension Schemes receive their relevant statements at the earliest possible opportunity. 

In response, WYPF have provide us an explanation as to progress being made in applying remedy for all members. You can find this in full in the second half of this newsletter. Some of the detail is quite technical but we wanted to share it all with you.

We will provide you with further updates as we are able.

Retired Members

It is this position that we are most disappointed with. You will see from the WYPF update below that priority is being given to other cohorts before the manual production of your statements. 

We are aware that you will have received letters last week informing you that they cannot give you a specific date for production of statement and that they will write again towards the end of year if your case has not been processed. This is the formal position that WYPF are taking presently. 

As we have communicated before, we have been following the priority order which was set by the Scheme Advisory Board. This set out a priority order of cohort members who were Ill Health Retired, Retired and those who retired with tapered protection. 

We are actively challenging the position that WYPF have taken and also exploring alternative options as to how we might be able to produce your statements as early as we can. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as finding another provider. 

We are acutely aware that this position is impacting not only retired members but also their families. We will continue to seek to ensure we resolve this position as soon as possible. We will do all that we are able to influence this position which is affecting the 20+ services who use WYPF but also some of those who don’t due to the complex nature of remedy application. 

These are the actions we have taken: 

• Established an internal Gold Group. This is chaired by a Principal Officer to ensure appropriate scrutiny to this specific issue which is also recorded as a significant risk on our corporate risk register. 
• After formally writing to WYPF, we will meet their Senior Leadership team next week in order to escalate our request to process all Ill Health Retirement (IHR) and Immediate Choice retired members statements now. 
• We have questioned whether WYPF’s current approach is justifiable and asked that the appropriate rationale for decision making processes is shared with us, given that it is not in line with the Scheme Advisory Board. 
• We will explore all options to increase capacity and capability to assist WYPF to produce statements for retired members. We are not sure what options WYPF will suggest but we are prepared to pay more, offer our resources to assist capacity or look to recruit third party resources to assist. 
• We have contacted other Services who do not use WYPF as their administrators to see if they are able to use their internal resources to carry out the calculations on our behalf. Unfortunately, this is not possible due to a number of risks which arise which cannot acceptably be mitigated. They include risks around data sharing, software compatibility between systems and responsibility and accountability for data accuracy as WYPF already have your pension in part payment for most of your cases. 
• We have sought support from the Local Government Association, other services and The Scheme Advisory Board to seek advice on any options which might be available to us to improve the current position. 

We will continue to engage with other to ensure we are positioned to act on any options which arise. We have reinforced our capacity in our pensions team by having a dedicated Pensions Manager. We have employed a strategic consultant to ensure that our pensions policies and processes are as efficient and robust as they can be.

Active Members and Tax Relief

Since the last newsletter, there are many who have received RSS-ABS for the year 2023-24, this is a significant move forwards and the majority of these are for active members, (individuals still in Service). 

This has been possible due to ESFRS ensuring that WYPF have had suitable data in sufficient time to be able to produce these statements in bulk as soon as WYPF systems enabled them too. 

There are some categories of member that we know statements cannot be produced for. WYPF should have written to you individually explaining why you won’t receive an ABS-RSS. 

Outstanding transfer in or inter-brigade cases Members with Pension Sharing Orders or Divorce Debits Annual Allowance Scheme Pays Deductions Members with Additional Pension Contributions Modified Scheme members Outstanding Matthews 2 cases 

It was planned that those who have received a 2023-24 statement will have received their 2024-25 statement by 31 Aug. This has not happened, and we are working with WYPF now to clarify data accuracy to ensure statements are produced within the next few weeks. 

We were also hoping, and some have been advised that the absence of Tax Relief within the 2023-4 statements would be resolved in the subsequent 2024-25 statement. Unfortunately, we have been advised that this will unlikely be the case. If you receive your statement and are looking at repaying contributions, if you contact pensions@esfrs.org, the Pensions team will be able to help provide details of Tax Relief which can be included in your decision making with regards to the options available to you.

Part Time Workers

Now that some ABS and RSS statements are being produced, we are able to move some of our capacity to the application of remedy for part time workers. 

We will be looking to recontact those who have expressed interest previously in joining the Scheme and those who we have been identified through a tracing agent. 

As you know, the statutory deadline for this is March 2026 but we are hopeful we can begin to make progress over the next few months so you will be more aware of options available to you. 

Update from West Yorkshire Pension Fund

ABS/DBS process 

Usually, we produce all statements every year and therefore in calendar date order. This year to be able to produce ABS-RSS 2025 and ABS 2025 out of scope for as many active members as possible by 31 August we have had to reconfigure our admin system. 

We still have a statutory requirement to produce the remaining statements for 2024 and now also for 2025. To enable us to produce the maximum possible volume of statements we are currently producing all versions of the annual statements this summer and autumn. 

We have provided scheme members since June with an ABS-RSS 2024 and this will be followed by ABS-RSS 2025 & ABS 2025 (out-of-scope). Within months we will start producing the DBS-RSS 2024 followed by DBS 2025 out-of-scope and DBS-RSS 2025. 

Once the bulk annual statement exercises are complete, we will continue to produce statements manually. For pensioners, the RSS is produced weekly and is also a manual process. 

Please note, we have not yet rolled back any deferred or pensioner records and this must be completed before we are able to produce any DBS or RSS. For DBS out-of-scope 2025 there are already 8,030 records queued for production. 

Further details are provided below: 

Active members ABS-RSS 2024 

There are 1,700 (as at 29 July) records still to roll back.

We have rolled back 4,200 records (as at 29 July) and produced an ABS-RSS 2024 

1 July to 15 August - continue with roll back and production of ABS-RSS 2024:

1. we will endeavour to remove as many of the blocks from the outstanding records but when we close the 2024 process there will be a number of ABS not produced. 
2. there are a variety of reasons: software issues (meaning lengthy manual calculations), missing data, data errors, blocks due to current work processes (usual in any year), lack of regulatory clarity. 

ABS-RSS 2025 

16 August 

• Finance to ensure all month returns are posted to records. 
• FRAs to ensure all outstanding monthly returns are submitted and outstanding data queries are replied to. 
• We cannot provide any ABS-RSS 2025 without this data.

Open ABS-RSS 2025 process 

• UPM team to prep production – this can only be done once we have confirmed no further development is needed for ABS-RSS 2024 
• Clear 2025 blocks 
• Production/distribution by 26 August for ABS-RSS 2025. 
• ABS for eligible out-of-scope cases (7,101 members) are queued for production subject to blocks being removed and successful upload of month 12 postings. 
• process can remain open until February 2026 unless the Oracle to SQL database project dictates otherwise 
• a member who does not receive an ABS-RSS 2024 will not receive a DBS-RSS 2025 until the most recent data has been uploaded to the record and the record rolled back. This may be later in the year and, if so, will not be part of the statement bulk exercises and will be manually produced 

We will continue to manually correct, update and issue ABS-RSS through 2025/26 

Deferred members 

The DBS process has not yet started and the software is untested. The information below is based on the software working as expected. Should we encounter issues these timelines will be impacted. 

DBS-RSS 2024 

September/October 

• open DBS-RSS 2024 
• Roll back all/as many DB records as possible 
• Bulk deferred remedy recalculation to be run 
• Prepare document template and test in UPM 
• Commence production/distribution of DBS-RSS 2024 we will endeavour to remove as many of the blocks from the outstanding records but when we close 2024 process there may be a number DBS-RSS 2024 not produced. 

Reasons include: software issues (meaning lengthy manual calculations) data missing, data errors, blocks due to current work processes (usual in any year), lack of regulatory clarity.

DBS-RSS 2025 

November 

• Open DBS-RSS 2025 
• 8,030 out of scope already queued for production will be produced as soon as DBS-RSS 2025 opens 
• Produce DBS-RSS 2025 as soon as possible & continue to clear previously blocked cases
• Process can remain open until February 2026 unless the SQL to Oracle move dictates otherwise a member who does not receive an DBS-RSS 2024 will not receive an DBS-RSS 2025 until the most recent data has been uploaded to the record and the record rolled back. This may be later in the year and, if so, will not be part of the statement bulk exercises and will be manually produced 

We will continue to manually correct, update and issue DBS-RSS through 2025/26.

Pensioners 

We will continue to process IC-RSS cases manually and ad hoc 

• Unprotected & tapered (Red & green) cases will remain manual calculations there are approximately 400 red & green cases and these can take up to 3 hours to complete 
• There are currently about 5,000 pensioners in scope for an RSS and require rollback. 

Once rolled back test cases will be identified for testing against bulk calculations in UPM test system. 

If successful, calculation and delivery times will significantly improve. 

Test cases to be identified in September. 

Production not anticipated prior to December.

Mid-August we will send a letter to IC members (Red & Green), explaining continued delay and managing expectations of the length of time the manual processing of cases will take.

Mid-December letter to all other pensioners notifying them of when/how (this is dependant on the outcome of the bulk RSS calculations in UPM) we may be able produce their RSS. 

Review resource when DBS-RSS exercises have closed. 

Matthews cases 

• October – letter to members explaining continued delay and managing expectations of the length of time the manual processing of cases will take.
• anticipated new MSM will take up post and resource dedicated for Matthews will come on stream. 

Other considerations 

Pension Dashboards continues to be an issue. In terms of infrastructure, we are well placed to present value data to the dashboards. Any eligible members without ABS or DBS data present on their records will have the latest known values (however old that is) on the dashboard when released to the public. A release date for Dashboards is still not currently known, and a six-month notice period has now been promised from Government.