Fireman’s £360m win for 999 staff
34,000 get windfalls after fight over pensions blunder
A RETIRED Scottish fireman has won a £360million payout f or thousands of emergency services workers after a six-year campaign.
Up to 34,000 former firefighters and police officers across the UK are in line for windfalls worth tens of thousands of pounds each after Billy Milne proved that a UK Government blunder short-changed them when they left their jobs.
Like many 999 workers, he gave up part of his annual pension payments in return for a lump sum on retirement – but was left out of pocket because officials were years late in updating rules on how his pension’s value was calculated.
The UK Government announced yesterday that emergency services workers will receive extra pension payments after it mismanaged its payout to Mr Milne. He was awarded more than £30,000 by the Pensions Ombudsman.
Home Office minister Mike Penning said the Government will pay out an extra £360million to those affected by the Government’s maladministration.
It comes after the Pensions Ombudsman ruled in May last year that the Government had underpaid 60-year-old Mr Milne.
Mr Penning said the principles of the ruling will be applied to affected individuals across Britain.
In a written ministerial statement, he said: ‘In May 2015, the Pensions Ombudsman i ssued his f i nal determination in a case brought by a retired Scottish f i refighter against the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD).
‘This found that GAD was guilty of maladministration in failing to update the factors used in the calculation of the firefighter’s lump sum pension payment.’
Mr Penning added: ‘Parliamentary approval for additional capital of £360million will be sought in a supplementary estimate for the Home Offi c e . Pending t hat approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £360million will be met by repayable cash advances from the [ Government’s] Contingencies Fund.’
Mr Milne said: ‘I am delighted that my case has led to extra payments for so many people.
‘The Government played every trick in the book to avoid paying. They knew they were in the wrong, but submitted appeal after appeal – and holding up proceedings for all these years will have cost the taxpayer unnecessarily. Firefighters and police who retired after 2006 were getting a large amount more, and when it was realised this was due to an error, we felt cheated. This is money hard-working men and women are due. It is not a gift. We all paid into our pensions for many years.’
The grandfather of three, who now lives with his wife Jane in Nairn, served with Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service in Glasgow for 31 years.
When he retired in 2005, at the rank of divisional officer, he took a £111,000 tax-free lump sum that reduced his annual pension from £29,610 to £22,207.
But Mr Milne noticed that younger firefighters retiring after him were getting far bigger cash pots.
It emerged that rules on how much of an individual’s pension pot can be ‘commuted’ into a lump sum had been updated in 2006 to take account of longer life expectancy, making f unds more valuable overall.
Mr Milne and the Fire Brigades Union, which took up his case, discovered t he commutation calculations had been long overdue for revision.
About 5,000 firefighters and 29,000 police officers are eligible for the extra payments.
‘They knew they were in the wrong’