On 20 December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that the transitional arrangements introduced as part of the 2015 reforms to the Firefighters’ Pension Scheme were discriminatory and, therefore, unlawful.
Following this ruling, the Government accepted that all public service pension schemes were similarly affected and is currently working on removing discrimination from the schemes for all affected members. This work is complex and is going to take some time. More information can be found in written statement HCWS187 (https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-03-25/HCWS187/), which was released on 25 March 2020.
As yet, there is still uncertainty around the final approach to removing discrimination and for this reason is has not been possible to reflect the impact of the ruling in your Annual Benefit statement this year.
You will therefore receive an estimate of the benefits built up in your current scheme membership to 31/03/2020 and a projection of benefits based on current scheme regulations to the normal pension age for the current scheme you are a member of.
This is in line with Fire Pensions Bulletin 32 which can be found at https://www.fpsregs.org/, which gives a clear direction from the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB) that projections can and should be based on the current scheme rules only.