“Over the past few weeks Pay and Pensions have received numerous enquiries in respect of the amended lump sums that are due to some retired officers. Many of the enquiries have included the information that other forces are about to or have already issued discharge notices and that payments are imminent or paid
Our response has been that we are awaiting guidance from the Home Office regarding the wording of the discharge notice as it is intended to cover a wide area and needs to provide relevant cover for all interested parties.
I give below the paragraph in respect of the discharge notices from a letter issued by the Home Office on 2/11/2015
“Discharge notice
Please accept our apologies that it has taken longer than expected to revert with advice in relation to discharge notices. We recognise that former officers are concerned about the issue. The topic has raised unexpectedly complex issues. However, the timescale for payments that we set out originally has not changed – the Government expects that pensions administrators will make the majority of calculations by December 2015 and the majority of payments by April 2016. We expect that these issues will be resolved shortly (i.e. within the next few weeks) and we will provide further advice as soon as possible”
Once the wording of the discharge notice is provided we will issue the discharge notices and make payment within the declared timescale
With regard to the payments themselves completion of the GAD spreadsheet that calculates the payment and interest is almost complete. This will be forwarded to GAD within the next week and once the lump sum payment amounts are confirmed we will endeavor to inform recipients of the lump sum part of the payment. The interest payment will depend on the date the payment is made as it is calculated on a day by day basis therefore it would be inappropriate to included that information. I will inform when the actual payment date is established.”
Regards
David Devine