The Teachers' Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No. 2) Regulations 1988

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations further amend the Teachers' Superannuation Regulations 1976 (“the principal Regulations”) and also make provision for membership of the scheme constituted by the principal Regulations to be voluntary.

Regulation 3 precludes a leaver who has qualified for benefits, or a person opting out under regulation 10 who has 2 or more years' service counting towards qualification for benefits, from being repaid his contributions.

Regulation 4 reduces from 5 years to 2 years, and from 10 years to 5 years, the periods of service giving rise, in differing circumstances, to an entitlement to benefits (immediate or deferred, according to age) on ceasing to be employed in reckonable service.

Regulation 5 provides that, notwithstanding those reductions, where benefits become payable early by reason of incapacity they are enhanced only if 5 or more years of reckonable service have been completed.

Regulation 6 reduces from 5 years to 2 years the period of service required for payment of a death gratuity.

Regulation 7 substitutes new regulations, numbered 62 to 67A, for regulations 62 to 67 of the principal Regulations (which concerned family benefits). The main changes are as follows:

(1) Provision is made for the payment of pensions to widowers (substituted regulation 62(2)); the service counting towards some such pensions is, however, restricted (substituted regulations 66(3), 67(9)).

(2) Widows of a polygamous marriage are jointly entitled to any widow’s pension that becomes payable (substituted regulation 62(3)).

(3) A descendant of one of the teacher’s parents may no longer be nominated to receive family benefits; nor may a child, however related to the teacher, or a woman teacher’s husband; written notice of a nomination is now required (substituted regulation 63(1), (3)).

(4) Where the deceased was a re-employed pensioner, the rate of a short-term pension is the total of the rates derived from his final salary and from his pension, instead of the latter only; where a short-term pension is payable to a person who has the care of a child or children, the period of service giving rise to an increase in its duration is reduced from 5 years to 2 years (substituted regulation 65(1)(d), (4)(a)).

(5) The period of service giving rise to an entitlement to long-term pensions is reduced from 5 years to 2 years (substituted regulation 66(1)(b)).

(6) Where the deceased had been employed in reckonable service after 5th April 1978 and, after ceasing to be so employed, re-married a woman who had been his wife while he was so employed, service before 6th April 1978 now counts in calculating her long-term widow’s pension (substituted regulation 67(3), (8)).

(7) A children’s long-term pension is payable at a higher rate not only where no long-term pension is payable to an adult but also where an adult pension ceases to be payable (substituted regulation 67A(5)).

Regulation 8 makes a reduction, proportionate to the reduction of qualifying periods from 5 years to 2 years, in the minimum rate of a widow’s special pension.

Regulation 9 makes the provision for widowers' guaranteed minimum pensions that is required by section 36 of the Social Security Pensions Act 1975, as amended by section 9(3) of the Social Security Act 1986.

Regulation 10 reconciles the principal Regulations with section 10 of the Social Security Act 1986 (which makes void, inter alia, any rule to the effect that an earner must be a member of a particular occupational pension scheme), by conferring a right to elect to cease to be, or not to become, subject to the principal Regulations as an employee in reckonable service.

Regulation 11 allows a person who has made such an election to elect to become subject again to the principal Regulations.

Section 12 of the Superannuation Act 1972 confers express power to make regulations retrospective in effect. These Regulations are retrospective, but rights in relation to former employees are not adversely affected. Regulation 12 makes supplementary provision in connection with the retrospective application of regulations 7, 10 and 11.