1. A Brief Recap of the Remedy
The McCloud remedy takes its name from a 2018 Court of Appeal judgment that found the transitional protections applied when most public-sector pension schemes moved to career-average arrangements in 2015 were age-discriminatory. Younger members were moved to the new career-average schemes immediately, while older members were either fully protected in their legacy final-salary schemes or tapered in gradually. The court ruled this unlawful.
The remedy was placed on a statutory footing by the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022. In essence, all eligible members — those with pensionable service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 (the "remedy period") who also had service before 1 April 2012 and were therefore affected by the transitional protection arrangements — are being treated as if they had remained in their legacy scheme throughout that period. At retirement, they are then given a choice between the legacy scheme benefits or the career-average 2015 scheme benefits for that period of service.
Who Is Broadly Affected?
- NHS members who joined before 1 April 2012 and were still active in the scheme during the remedy period (2015–2022)
- Teachers, police officers, firefighters, civil servants, armed forces personnel, and LGPS members under comparable eligibility criteria for their respective schemes
- Members who have already retired within the remedy period may have their benefits recalculated retrospectively
2. Where Things Stand in 2026
NHSBSA (the NHS Business Services Authority, which administers the NHS Pension Scheme in England and Wales) has been issuing remediable service statements to eligible members. This is a significant administrative undertaking, and the rollout has been phased. If you believe you are eligible and have not yet received your statement, you should contact NHSBSA directly.
For members who have already retired within the remedy period, retrospective recalculations are ongoing. Some of these members have received revised pension payments; others are still awaiting their corrected figures. The timeline for completion has shifted more than once, and the process remains live.
Important
Receiving a remediable service statement does not mean the figures within it are correct. It means the scheme has produced a calculation based on the data it holds. If that underlying data contains errors — incorrect part-time fractions, missing periods of service, wrong salary figures — those errors will flow through into your remedy calculation.
3. What Is a Remediable Service Statement?
A remediable service statement sets out, for the remedy period (1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022), the estimated value of your benefits under two calculations: what you would receive under your legacy scheme for that period, and what you would receive under the 2015 career-average scheme. At or near retirement, you will be invited to choose between these figures for that segment of your service.
It is a complex document, and not all members find it easy to interpret. The statement typically covers:
- Your remediable service period and the employments included within it
- The pensionable pay and contributions figures used in each calculation
- The projected legacy scheme benefit for the remedy period
- The projected 2015 scheme benefit for the same period
- Any ill-health, survivor benefits, or lump-sum options relevant to each
Check These Fields Carefully
- Are all of your employments between 2015 and 2022 listed?
- Are the pensionable pay figures consistent with your payslips for each year?
- If you worked part-time, is your whole time equivalent (WTE) fraction applied correctly throughout?
- If you had a career break or period of reduced contributions, is it reflected accurately?
- Does the statement align with your full service extract from the scheme?
4. The Deferred Choice at Retirement
One of the most significant features of the McCloud remedy is that eligible members do not make an irrevocable choice about their remedy period benefits when they receive their remediable service statement. Instead, the choice is deferred until shortly before retirement, when the scheme will present you with updated figures based on your actual retirement date and final salary (or career-average revalued earnings, as appropriate).
This means two things. First, your statement today is indicative, not final. The numbers will be recalculated using your actual retirement circumstances. Second, the quality of your choice depends entirely on the accuracy of the data the scheme holds. If your service record contains errors, those errors will shape both options you are presented with — and you may unknowingly choose the wrong one, or choose the better of two wrong figures rather than the better of two correct ones.
Members who expect to retire within the next two to five years should be particularly alert to this. The time to query inaccuracies is now, while there is still opportunity to resolve them before retirement calculations are finalised.
5. Why Remedy Calculations Can Still Contain Errors
The McCloud remedy requires NHSBSA to reprocess millions of records using data that, in some cases, dates back decades. The administrative challenge is enormous, and errors have been reported in practice. The categories of mistake most commonly observed include:
Common Error Types
Part-time fractions applied inconsistently
Where a member worked part-time for some of the remedy period, the WTE fraction must be applied correctly to pensionable pay in each year. Errors in historical payroll data can cause the scheme to use an incorrect fraction for one or more years, reducing the pensionable pay figure used in both the legacy and the career-average calculations.
Missing employments
Members who worked across multiple NHS trusts or employers during the remedy period may find that one or more employments are absent from their statement. This is particularly common for members who moved between employer types — for example, between an NHS trust and a GP practice.
Salary data not dynamised correctly
For the legacy final-salary calculation, the pensionable pay used for earlier years must be dynamised (uprated) appropriately. Errors in the dynamising process can understate the projected legacy benefit, making the career-average option appear more favourable when it may not be.
Career breaks and maternity periods
Periods of reduced or nil contributions during maternity leave, adoption leave, or agreed career breaks must be handled precisely. The rules differ between legacy and 2015 scheme rules, and misclassification can alter both projected figures.
Data not updated from employer submissions
NHSBSA relies on employer submissions to populate service records. Where an employer submitted incorrect or incomplete data — and never corrected it — the error sits quietly in the record, invisible until someone checks.
6. Evidence to Gather and Preserve
The most effective thing an NHS member can do before retirement is assemble a complete evidential record. This gives you the means to verify your remediable service statement and, if necessary, raise a formal challenge with the scheme before retirement calculations are locked in.
Documents to Gather
- Payslips for 2015–2022: These are your primary evidence of actual pensionable pay in each year and any part-time fractions in effect at the time.
- P60 documents for the remedy period: P60s corroborate annual earnings and contributions where payslips are incomplete.
- Contracts of employment: Particularly any contract change letters confirming a move to or from part-time hours, a change of employer, or a change in role with a salary change.
- Your full service extract from NHSBSA: This is the scheme's record of your service history. Compare it line by line against your own records.
- Annual benefit statements for 2015–2022: These are a secondary check on the pensionable pay figures used by the scheme in each year of the remedy period.
- Maternity leave or career break letters: Any official correspondence confirming the start and end dates of a period of reduced or absent pensionable service.
7. When an Independent Check Adds Value
Many NHS members will find that their remediable service statement looks broadly correct, and that a careful comparison against their own documents gives them confidence in the figures. For those members, our free self-check tool and published guides may be all they need.
However, members with more complex circumstances — those who worked part-time for much of the remedy period, those with multiple NHS employers, those who had career breaks, or those who are approaching retirement and face a financially significant choice — may benefit from a structured, evidence-led review by an independent specialist.
PensionTech's NHS pension audit reviews your remediable service statement against your own documents, identifies discrepancies, and provides a plain-English written report setting out what we found and any steps we recommend you take with the scheme. We are not financial advisers, and we do not tell you which remedy option to choose — that decision requires regulated advice, which we always encourage members to seek. What we do is give you an accurate picture of what the numbers should be.
Disclaimer
PensionTech is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and does not provide financial advice. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice or a recommendation about which pension options to choose. For decisions about your pension, we strongly encourage you to seek independent regulated financial advice from a qualified IFA who specialises in public-sector pensions.
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