Civil service dependents pension payments

[civilservice]

Does anybody know how the civil service dependent's pension works? Is the money paid in a lump sum? Monthly? Is it backdated to the date of death? It's the alpha scheme if that makes a difference. Thank you.

Hopeful impatient bump

Just to add that I have googled this but can't find an answer anywhere and the pension scheme are being extremely slow to answer any questions. This is a pension that will be paid to a young child from their deceased parent's pension.

If it’s for a child this was from some time ago, Paid monthly. Uses the child’s tax allowance.
can be paid to the dependent if at uni etc.

only paid once the deceased partner is not on fully pay.

not sure how it works if you’re the spouse etc.

Sorry just seen your update.
you need to send in the child’s birth certificate and if past school leaving age then confirmation of studying etc.

I've done the application and sent all the relevant info off but it's taking ages for them to answer correspondence.,

There is no spouse or surviving partner to pay, just the child.

I have no idea what the payments will look like in terms of how much. There's over 20 years service and the final salary at the time of death was £58,000.
It's helpful to know the payments are monthly, thank you.

I’m so sorry for your loss.
If you can access a handbook it may tell you, different schemes do it differently.
have a browse online.
They used to be good on the phone especially with generic information/timings etc.

Thank you. I'm sorry for your loss too.
None of the information online tells me anything in terms of specifics. On the phone I've been told different things too which isn't helpful at all. I think I'll work on the assumption of monthly payments and hopefully they will backdate to the date of death when they finally get round to paying anything.
Did they pay the money to your child directly or to you as their parent? I've had conflicting advice about that too on the phone. My child is primary school age.

Have you contacted the charity for civil servants. The civil service pensions can take ages and get things wrong, also if the parent/parents were civil servants for sometime there might be more than just the Alpha pension.

You may have already seen this OP but it gives some detail regarding a child’s pension

https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/knowledge-centre/pension-schemes/alpha-scheme-guide/death-benefits-section-06/death-while-you-are-in-service-section-06b/

I didn't know there was a charity, thank you. I know it's the Alpha scheme but that's all I know.

I've been through the website but I can't find answers to the specifics I'd like to know.

I've had a look via the link provided and the Alpha scheme is pretty complicated. You need to know what he earned over the whole of his working life with them. And he may well have been in a different scheme first, so you'd need to do pro rata for each then add them together or something.

There is an excel calculator you can download so might be worth playing about with that.

The child should get 50% of what he would have got, but there appears to be some incomprehensible enhancement applied before they do the 50%.

Sorry, I'm usually fairly good with pensions but I can't fathom how anyone is supposed to understand this.

The charity, or PCS union, seems like a good place to ask.

Calculator is here: https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/knowledge-centre/tools-and-calculators/pension-calculators/

Details of the enhancement are on the page a previous poster linked.

I wouldn't have a clue where to start with trying to calculate it but thank you. I'll give the charity a call tomorrow and see if they can shed any light on things.
Alpha does seem complicated and I have no idea what a fairly standard pension payment he'd have been expecting per month.

Im basically wondering if this will be nothing to get excited about or if it will make a difference to my child's quality of life. The circumstances are traumatic and money is a worry.

Sorry for your loss at what must be a very difficult time for you all.

I can't advise on the pension but wanted to add that the PCS union offer a death in service payment so if your child's parent was a member it is worth applying for the payment to see if the child is eligibility as a beneficiary. It's worth around around £1700: https://www.pcs.org.uk/who-we-are/membership-benefits I imagine other unions may offer similar.

And yes to contacting the civil service charity as they offer a bereavement support service with the option to apply for financial support for funeral costs but may also have other funds available to support the child https://www.cfcs.org.uk/help-advice/bereavement/

All the best x

I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to your question. But l just wanted to reinforce what previous posters have said - he will almost certainly have had more than just the Alpha pension scheme.

Alpha was first introduced in 2015. If he was a civil servant before then he would have accrued pensions in one or more of the previous schemes (as well as being moved over to Alpha eventually).

Previous schemes were called Classic or Nuvos for example. There was also a judgment (“McCloud remedy”) which you might hear/read about.

I don’t fully understand the details myself so don’t want to tell you anything wrong. But it’s important to know that a substantial part of his pension entitlement may come from previous schemes. They all have different rules.

Get as much expert advice as you can. It’s all very complicated! Civil Service charity and Union sound like good ideas. Maybe also his HR can help?

Another question - Were you registered as next of kin on his scheme? You don’t need to blood related and I believe there can be more than one beneficiary.

I’m so sorry for your loss.

@Eateateat101 thank you. I've phoned pcs and he was not with them.

No, I'm not next of kin. We had been apart for a decade.
The scheme sounds very complicated! I'd have no clue how to even try and work it out due to not having any details to put into the calculator.
I just wish they'd hurry up and tell me what my child will get and when and how often. It's been weeks now.

Your childs father should have received annual pension benefit statements which should at least give some idea of what is payable. Is there anyone who could check that for you? These have been online for the last 4 or 5 years but he might have printed them?

I'm sorry to say that the civil service pensions people have been hideously slow in recent experience

So having a read through I think:

Base stance is that dependant children get up to 50% of the pension you would have received, up to a total of 100%

So 1 child gets 50%, 2 children 50% each, 3 children 33% each.

But before that they uplift the pension value as follows:

They take the person's alpha pension that was earned in the alpha scheme. Then they multiply this by the lower of 10 years, the years left to normal pension age, or the amount of time left to the end of the person's fixed term contract.

So if the person was 60, and their normal pension age was 66, it would be multiplied by 6. If the person was 50, it would be multiplied by 10, and if the person had 12 months left on a fixed term contract it would be multiplied by 1.

Then they divided by the number of years a person has been in the scheme. So if someone had been in Alpha for 5 years and was 50, then it would be multiplied by 10 and divided by 5 - so multiplied by 2 overall.

Or if someone was 50 and had been in Alpha for 10 years it would end up multiplied by 1 overall.

That is then added to the pension the person has already accumulated. So e.g. if the annual pension was £5k and you had a 2x multiplier you'd have the £5k plus 2x5k = 5k + 10k = 15k.

So basically it uplifts the pension more if the person who has died is younger, and more if they haven't paid as much into Alpha (presumably because the pension value will on average be lower).

Does that help?

So reading through, from what you've said the person was probably on Alpha since 2015, unless they had transitional protection. I would guess they were under 57? And I think there's only 1 child.

So let's assume they will have 9 years of "earned" contributions (because it excludes contributions to previous pension schemes, I think). I'm not certain on this but it seems like a prudent assumption.

Alpha is a career average scheme so it matters what they earned every year for the last 9 years. So it will vary depending on whether they had had promotions recently.

On the basis of a 58k final salary, I'm going to make a pessimistic assumption of an average salary of 40k for pension contribution purposes over the 9 years.

That would give an overall pension within the alpha scheme of circa £7,500 per annum, with an enhancement of 10/9 if my assumptions at the top are correct. So the overall pension entitlement per year would be just under 16k which would then be multiplied by 50% if there's one child. So potentially circa 8k per year.

BUT I am not a pension advisor and all I've done is read the website and apply a massive load of assumptions to it. So it might not be accurate, it's just my best estimate. If you can correct any of the assumptions it can be made more accurate potentially but it's still missing a lot of information.

They would also have pension from the first eleven years as well. Which might be about the same again I guess as a) it would be based on a lower historic salary, but b) it would have been a more advantageous scheme (hence them ending it).

I've just read back and realised I've put a typo in the salary. It's £38,000 not £58,000 which will make a big difference. I know now of at least 25 years service in the civil service.

is this the death in service lump sum, or do you get that, and pension? I have a CS pension and I know that in the event of my death when still working my kids who i have nominated to receive the death in service will receive that. It’s twice my salary. I have always assumed it’s a lump sum, but i don’t know.

It will be both.