Last updated on September 4th, 2019 at 01:26 pm
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe Ombudsman’s decision has now been made public and it has become clear that he found in favour of the Applicant, a retired Firefighter.
This has implications for thousands of Police Officers and Firefighters who retired between 1998 and 2006.
The full adjudication of the Ombudsman can be found here.
There is also a Technical Note which reads;
The Ombudsman notes that, whilst his findings in the Determination are limited to Mr Milne’s complaint, the principles are the same for other retired firefighters and police officers. To avoid further cases having to be heard, he expects government to make arrangements for payments to be made to others affected, reflecting the more beneficial terms that would have applied had commutation factors been reviewed and, where appropriate, revised at the appropriate times. GAD has prepared tables for use in the calculation of redress, based on a best reconstruction of the commutation factors which would have applied if factors had been reviewed and revised at 1 December 2001 and at 1 December 2004. The mortality and related assumptions used in the development of these tables have been reviewed by an independent firm of consulting actuaries who have confirmed that the assumptions fall within the range that GAD might reasonably have chosen if it had prepared revised commutation factors at these dates. These tables will be passed to the relevant government bodies.
It seems to be clear that the Ombudsman EXPECTS that Police and Fire Authorities will do the honourable thing now and pay out all those affected without thousands more cases going to Court. Mrs May might conceivably try to interfere, and that would make her even less popular than she already is, we shall see.
In the meantime, don’t spend it before you’ve cashed the cheque just in case.
