In addition to your Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) pension you may also qualify for a State Pension.
The State Pension is paid through the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). If you are eligible for a State Pension, as well as your pension with GMPF, these pensions will be paid separately.
To qualify for State Pension, you will need to have reached State Pension age (SPA). SPA is also the normal pension age for your Local Government Pension Scheme benefits.
The SPA is regularly reviewed to make sure it is affordable and fair. This means that your SPA may change in the future. You can find out when you reach your SPA on the government’s website.
State Pension increase
If you are receiving your State Pension this will increase by 8.5 per cent in April 2024.
The increase for State Pension is based on the ‘triple lock’ safeguard. This means State Pension increases either with inflation (like your GMPF pension), with the average increase in wages, or by 2.5 per cent, depending on which is higher.
The full State Pension for 2024/25 is £221.20 per week, or approximately £11,500 per year.
Payment of the increases to your pension benefits may be shared between your Local Government pension and your State Pension. This depends on whether you reached SPA before 6 April 2016 and had membership in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 1997.
During this period, you would have been ‘contracted out’ of the Additional State Pension, and so paid less National Insurance contributions. The LGPS guarantees to pay you a pension that is at least as much as you would have received had you not been contracted out. This is known as the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) and is paid as part of your LGPS pension. The Government is responsible for paying part of the increases on your GMP.
Tax and your pension
When it comes to tax, there are two things to keep in mind:
1. Personal allowance – this allowance is the income you can have before you pay tax and is currently £12,570 per year. Personal Allowance has not increased in line with inflation like your pension.
2. Your state pension is deducted from your Personal Allowance. So, if for example, your state pension was £6,000 a year, your Personal Allowance would reduce to £6,570.
The state pension has increased this year, which will reduce your Personal Allowance further and may cause a change in the tax code we must apply to your GMPF pension. As your GMPF pension has also increased, this could cause an increase in tax payments or result in you beginning to pay tax. The net total between your state pension and your GMPF pension should, however, be an increase over previous months.
HMRC sets your tax code, and we cannot change it. You will need to speak to HMRC if you have any queries.
For more information about State Pension, you can visit www.gov.uk