The more you put into the pension scheme now, the better off you’ll be when you retire. If you’d like to put extra money into your pension, you can do it in several ways:
- arranging to purchase additional years’ membership (or pension from 1 April 2009)
- making additional voluntary contributions
- contributing to a personal pension plan or stakeholder pension scheme.
Download a Guide to Increasing your Pension Benefits for information.
Additional years' membership
Arranging to purchase additional years membership is only possible if you elected to do so before 31 March 2009. It means the total membership used to calculate your pension is increased. It also means you can more quickly reach the minimum total membership needed to protect you and your family.
You can buy up to 6 years 9 months of additional membership. If you choose to stop paying additional contributions, or leave before buying them all, your total membership will only be increased by the number of years you’ve paid for by then. However, if you retire due to ill health or die in service, the full number of additional years will be added to your total membership.
From 1 April 2009 you can arrange to purchase additional pension in the new Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). If you want to find out the cost of this, our ARC (additional regular contribution) calculator is the place to start.
Additional voluntary contributions (AVCs)
You can choose to pay additional voluntary contributions that are invested outside the LGPS so you have your own pension fund building up over time.
Some employers also choose to run a shared cost additional voluntary contributions arrangement. This means you can choose for both you and your employer to pay more towards your pension.
Check your employer’s policy statement to see if this is possible.
There are several things you can do with your your own AVC pension fund:
- Buy an annuity (an annual payment) to supplement your pension
- Buy a top-up pension from the LGPS, which is inflation-proofed and provides benefits for your dependants
- Buy both a top-up and an annuity
- Draw some or all of your fund as a lump sum (up to a limit).
Further details of the Prudential's AVCs are available on their website. Alternatively for information on what you can and can’t do with AVCs, and how to take advantage of them, download A Guide to the LGPS.
Contribute to another pension
You can choose to pay into a personal pension plan or stakeholder pension scheme as well as the LGPS.
Whoever you buy your other pension from will invest your money, and when you retire your investments are cashed in to buy you an annuity (annual payment).
What you get out of a personal pension plan or stakeholder pension relies on how much you put in and how well your investments perform over time - there’s no guarantee or link to your earnings.
Download a Guide to Increasing your Pension Benefits for information.
Independent advice
The choices for extra payments into your pension can be confusing and different people may benefit from different options. If you’re thinking of making extra payments, it may be worth taking financial advice - see the financial advice page for more information.
More information
You can download A Guide to the LGPS, with full details of LGPS membership, to print out and read when you want. If you would rather receive a copy by post, contact us.
If you’ve got further questions, visit the employee member frequently asked questions page of this site.