Increases
Some increases are guaranteed but others are discretionary. Once added, increases are guaranteed.
Increases before retirement
Each year we aim to add an increase to your pension
Adding a discretionary increase
Each year we aim to add an increase to your pension, to keep it up with inflation. If we can add an increase, we'll add this on 1 January. Once added, your increase is guaranteed.
Your increases buy you extra pension, in the same way your usual contributions do. Increases are added to your whole pension, including previous increases.
Increases vary from year to year, but in the long term we aim to match inflation.
Increases after retirement
Once you retire your pension will increase each Janaury
How much we increase it by depends on when you earned your pension
Pension earned before April 1997
Any pension you earned before April 1997 is not guaranteed to increase. We will only increase this part of your pension if we can add a discretionary increase.
Pension earned between April 1997 and March 2006
We will increase any pension you earned between these dates in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI), up to 5%. We use the previous September’s RPI as the benchmark.
Pension earned after April 2006
We will increase any pension you earned between these dates in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI), up to 2.5%. We use the previous September’s RPI as the benchmark.
In years where inflation is very high, we can increase your pension by more than these caps. We'll only do this if we feel the scheme can afford to do this, i.e. we will not financially jeapordise the security of your pension.
How do increases work?
To check whether we can afford to increase your pension, we check two moving parts.
The first is the amount of money we have (assets). The second is how much money we need to pay everyone’s pension (liabilities).
We run a check towards the end of each year to make sure we have enough money to increase your pension. We need to make sure we are not being too risky and we can be certain we can continue to pay everyone’s pension, so we only add increases if we feel comfortable that we can. If we have more assets than we need to pay everyone's pension, we can consider adding increases.
Ultimately it is down to us to decide whether we can increase your pension, but our professional advisers help us decide.
Your increase is added to your whole pension, including previous increases.
When are increases added?
We add increases on 1 January each year.
What was the increase for January 2025?
There is a split increase for January 2025.
An increase of 6.7% was added to pensions earned before April 1997. We added an increase of 2.7% to pensions earned after this date.
Both of these were added on 1 January 2025.
You can see your increase building up each year on PensionsOnline. Just head to the My Membership Toolkit page, and click on the links on the right.
Historic increases
Here are the increases over the last 5 years.
* 6.7% was added to pensions earned before April 1997 and 2.7% was added to pensions earned after this date.