Policy background Part 14: Civil Nuclear Sector Relevant Nuclear Pension Schemes
Government policy, led by HM Treasury, is to reform public sector pension schemes by implementing the recommendations from Lord Hutton’s review conducted in 2011. This resulted in the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, which reformed the majority of pension schemes within the public service. Government policy is for final salary pension schemes in the public sector to be reformed to a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) based scheme, in line with the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 and over four million public sector workers have already moved to new pension arrangements.
	There are two final salary public sector schemes (with a total of approximately 8000 scheme members) within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) group that are therefore within scope for reform, with estimated savings currently expected to total in the region of £200 million subject to the date of implementation.
	Recognising the vital work that the NDA and its workforce delivers, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the NDA worked with national trade unions in 2017 to develop an agreed pension benefit structure that was tailored to the characteristics of the affected NDA employees. This resulted in a proposed bespoke CARE benefit structure which is in line with the key principles of reforms already implemented in respect of other public sector pension schemes. The bespoke CARE scheme design was formally accepted by the national trade unions following statutory consultation with affected NDA employees and a ballot of union members.
	A public consultation was undertaken and published in December 2018, inviting views from stakeholders about how government proposes to enable the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to implement pension reform of the two pension schemes in scope: the Combined Nuclear Pension Plan (CNPP) and the SLC section of the Magnox Electric Group of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme.
	Following the public consultation, the policy outlined in paragraph above was adopted. The measures featured in the Act will enable NDA to amend pension schemes for their employees in the nuclear sector in alignment with wider changes to public sector pensions.