Administrator wrote on Jan 14th, 2015, 9:46am:I have been in contact with Pensions Department regarding the BBC Pension Increase for 2015.
Here is their reply:-
"BBC Pensions are increased by the RPI for the December in the preceding year. RPI for December 2014 was 1.6%.
However, the Trustees have not met to discuss what increase will be applied and no official announcement will be made until at least February/March 2015."
Admin.
Thanks Admin.
I take it then that this year is no different to others, in that the Trustees are meeting to decide what level the increase will be.
I knew that the Trustees have descretion as to whether to award an increase in the situation of 0 or negative inflation, or indeed if inflation rose above 5% New Benefits and 10% Old Benefits.
Both handbooks for Old and New state that the Trustees award an annual increase of (the lesser of) RPI or 5%/10% respectively.
Now we know that the Trustees meet to decide granting any increase, does this mean in line with the handbooks that if the RPI figure is between 0 and 5/10% then the meeting is a "rubber stamp" operation?
If it isn't and the Trustees can award ANY figure between 0 and 5/10% of their choice this now makes the fact that the Old and New Benefits sections of the Scheme are "tied" to RPI irrelevant. In effect the Trustees can circumnavigate that fact and agree an award which is "coincidentally" the same as Decembers CPI.
This isn't sour grapes by the way..... as it's understandable that there are all most certainly more pensioners under the Old and New Benefits section of the scheme at the moment as opposed to Career Average. That balance will change over the next 10/15 years.
If the future of the scheme is to be protected (meaning we all still get a pension) and the only way is that the Trustees can decide the annual award (instead of using an independent index) well it would be understandable.
Some clarification from BBC Pensions on how things are done would be good because what Admin has found out today seems different to what the handbooks say.