Consultation outcome

Privacy information notice: consultation on firefighters' pensions prospective remedy

Updated 21 June 2022

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

Applies to England

Your personal information, supplied for the purposes of the consultation, will be held and processed by the Home Office. The Home Office is the controller of this information. This also includes when it is collected or processed by third parties on our behalf. The Home Office can be contacted in relation to the consultation using the address and email address below.

Fire Pensions Team
Police Workforce and Professionalism Unit
Home Office
6th Floor, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Email: Firepensionspublicservicepensionsremedy@homeoffice.gov.uk

Personal data we are collecting

We have asked respondents to the consultation to voluntarily provide the following information:

• capacity in which they are responding to this consultation exercise (for example, member of the public)

• if they have previously served within the fire service

• company name/organisation (if applicable)

• If they are a representative of a group, the name of the group and a summary of the people or organisations that they represent

Taken together, these data may enable a respondent to be identified. In addition, the way in which a person responds to this consultation will also impact the data we collect on them. If someone responds via email, we will have collected their email address.

If respondents provide the information we request, we will use this to understand if there are significant differences between types of respondents with regard to responses to the consultation questions. We may illustrate findings through quotes provided to the consultation. We will ensure these are anonymised and do not include any personally identifiable information, unless an organisation tells us they are content for their response to be made public.

Your opinions are also personal data. We have requested that all responses to the free text questions remove all personally identifiable information such as names, dates and locations. However, some respondents may still provide information which could identify them.

How and why the Home Office uses your information

The Home Office collects, processes and shares personal information to enable it to carry out its statutory, and other, functions.

The Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so.

The Home Office may share your information with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.

The Home Office is undertaking a consultation on Public Service Pensions: Firefighters’ Pensions (Amendment) Regulations 2022, to enact the first phase of the remedy to the McCloud / Sargeant cases.

The first phase of the remedy is to make changes to the scheme regulations, in line with the Public Service Pensions & Judicial Offices Bill, which will close the legacy pension schemes to future accrual from 31 March 2022 and ensure all members who remain in service from 1 April 2022 are members of the reformed scheme (“the 2015 Scheme”).

Questions for consultation

Question 1: As required by the PSPJO, the draft regulations seek to ensure that the legacy schemes are closed to future accrual from 31 March 2022 and that all members are in the 2015 Scheme in respect of any pensionable service from 1 April 2022. Are the draft regulations sufficient to meet this aim? Do you think there are any changes or additions required to the draft regulations to achieve the stated policy aims?

Question 2: The government is proposing that the regulations will be drafted to make additional provision for ill-health retirements that straddle the transfer date. This provision would ensure that a protected member who applies for ill-health retirement before 31 March 2022, and which is determined in their favour after that date, is treated no less favourably than if the application had been determined on that date. Do you have any views on the proposals regarding ill-health retirement cases that straddle 1 April 2022? In particular, do you have any views on how the “underpin” should work or be provided for in the draft regulations?

Question 3: The regulations will need to ensure that provisions which allow arrangements for purchasing service in the legacy schemes by periodical contributions, entered into before 1 April 2022, can continue on and after that date and that additional benefit purchasing in the legacy schemes ceases on 31 March 2022. In your view, would existing provisions in the relevant reformed scheme regulations achieve these aims? Alternatively, would additional provisions be needed to achieve this outcome?

Question 4: We are interested in understanding whether the scheme regulation amendments will have an impact on people with protected characteristics, beyond those equality considerations undertaken and set out in the EQIA undertaken alongside the consultation and PSPJO. Protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Do you think that the draft regulations and policy intent as set out above will have any positive or negative impacts on people with protected characteristics, beyond those already considered? If so, which and why/why not?

Question 5: Are there any other areas which you think should be addressed in these regulations to ensure all members are moved to the relevant reformed scheme from 1 April 2022, and that the differential treatment, as identified by the Court of Appeal, is ended?

In this case, the legal basis for the Home Office processing personal data is set out in Article 6(1)(c) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). Article 6(1)(c) permits the Home Office to process personal data where this is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which it is subject.

We will examine and analyse responses sent by respondents to the consultation. This will involve identifying issues and themes in responses and coding them to understand which of these are significant across the responses. We will publish high-level analysis, including breakdowns by the data we collect and the organisations who have responded (if they agree for their response to be made public and associated with the organisation), in the government response to this consultation. This will help us and those reading the government response understand how views differ across different groups.

More information about the ways in which the Home Office may use your personal information, including the purposes for which we use it, the legal basis, and who your information may be shared with can be found in the personal information charter.

What we will not do

We will not publish email addresses, or any personal information inadvertently provided in the free text responses.

Data obtained in relation to the consultation via post or email will not be shared with other organisations or sent overseas.

Your personal data will not be used for any automated decision making.

Storing your information

Personal information obtained via email will be held on a secure government IT system for the purpose for which it is being processed and in line with departmental policy. More details of this policy can be found in the personal information charter.

Any personal information that may be obtained via post will be securely stored in a government building, in line with Home Office Security and Retention Policy.

Retention of personal data

We will not keep personal data longer than is necessary for the purpose for which they are being processed. Our need to retain the data will be reviewed and maintained in accordance with Home Office data retention policies. Any deletion of data will take place in accordance with Home Office data retention policies.

Requesting access to your personal data

Under UK GDPR you have the right to request access to the personal information the Home Office holds about you, to ask to restrict our use of your personal information, and to ask us to rectify your personal information. If you want to exercise these rights, please email us at:

Firepensionspublicservicepensionsremedy@homeoffice.gov.uk

Postal applications may be made at:

Fire Pensions Team
Police Workforce and Professionalism Unit
Home Office
6th Floor, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

When you write to us you must provide the following:

• confirmation of your identity: a copy of your passport, full driving license or birth certificate (please do not send original documents)

• confirmation of name and address: a copy of your full driving license, a copy of a recent utility bill, bank or credit card statement, pension or child benefit book (or similar official document which shows your name and address)

• if you are writing on behalf of someone else, a signed declaration from the person you are acting for indicating that they have asked you to make an application on their behalf

If possible, you should also send

• any information that might help us in locating the information in which you are interested such as the date you submitted your response

Once we receive all the above information, the Home Office has one month within which to respond to your request. This may be extended by up to two months in complex cases.

Please note, however, posted and online consultation responses may not always be identifiable as personal data are provided only on a voluntary basis. Where a data access request for a posted or online response is received and is identifiable, this will be processed as any other request for access to personal data. Where the response is not identifiable you will receive a response stating this.

There may also be a number of legal or other official reasons why we need to continue to keep or use your data.

More information on requesting access to your personal data can be found in the personal information charter.

Other rights

Because we are processing your personal data under the legal basis of legal obligation, you have the following rights:

1. to restrict the use of your personal information, or to ask to have your data corrected. 2. to contact the Home Office’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) if you have questions or concerns about how we are processing your personal data.

Reporting a concern

Email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk
Telephone: 020 7035 6999

Or write to:

Office of the DPO
Home Office
Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

When we process your information, we will comply with the law, including data protection legislation. Should you feel that your data is being processed in breach of data protection law or other legislation, you can report your concern to our Data Protection Officer using the contact details provided above, or contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at:

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45.

Fax: 01625 524510

You can also visit the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Questions or concerns about personal data

If you have any further questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information please see the Home Office’s personal information charter.