Technical terms

If you are re-employed by an organisation covered by Civil Service Pensions, after you have taken your premium pension, your pension may be reduced or stopped. This is known as abatement. This is because the Scheme rules require that your new salary and your pension, when added together, may not normally be more than your salary when you retired.

Find out more about Abatement.

ABSs provide you with a summary of your Civil Service pension benefits, up to the date of the statement each year.

Find out more about your ABS.

If you are opted out of the scheme you will  be automatically re-enrolled by your employer periodically (typically every three years) from your employer’s staging date. You will have further rights to opt out again if you are re-enrolled.

If you were a member of premium before 6 April 2016, you were opted out or ‘contracted-out’ of the State Second Pension (S2P) up to that date. You and your employer will have paid the lower rate of National Insurance contributions.

A defined benefit pension scheme provides benefits based on set criteria. In premium, your benefits are worked out using your final pensionable earnings and reckonable service.

A defined contribution pension scheme provides benefits on retirement based on the amount of money that has been paid in to the scheme and investment returns. Benefits at retirement may be provided as an income and/or a lump sum payment.

The maximum level of pay we will use when working out pension benefit and contributions. The cap applies to all members with benefits in any of the final salary sections (classic, classic plus and premium) who joined the scheme on or after 1 June 1989.

If you retire early because of ill health or die in service we may increase the number of years you have in the scheme when we work out your (or your dependants’) pension benefits.