Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales - Access and Fairness

Overview

Ministerial foreword

This government cares about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). We care about the impact it can have at scale, unleashing growth and supporting critical investment in the UK. We also care about the personal experience of the millions of individual members that make up the scheme, members who have often given their whole working lives to public service. As someone who has worked in local government, alongside so many of those members, I care personally about the experience of members in the LGPS.  

We know that for many of these members their LGPS benefits will be their largest asset and a vital lifeline when they retire. For them, security and equality of benefits and effectiveness of service and administration are key to the success of the LGPS. We also know that the wider LGPS community relies on the government stewarding the scheme well, both in respecting local decision-making and providing clear and up-to-date Regulations. 

That’s why we’re launching this consultation. It fundamentally improves fairness in and access to the LGPS, addressing key issues that have been neglected for too long and treating them with the urgency they deserve. Its focus on equality, fairness, integrity, efficiency, accuracy and rewarding hard work reflects the government's commitment to making work pay and improving workers’ rights.  

Some of these changes are definitive answers to long-standing problems, like ensuring equality of survivor benefit entitlement, and some are just the beginning of the work to be done, like the proposals on the gender pensions gap, but they are a key and essential step in the right direction. They position the LGPS as leading the way across the public service pensions landscape. 

I hope you’ll join me in seeing the opportunity presented in this consultation to make real, lasting, positive impact to LGPS members and the communities they represent. 

Jim McMahon OBE MP, Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution.

15 May 2025