Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS): what it puts on your payslip

The published figures

What it puts on, or takes off, the payslip

Pensionable pay for the period

The figure the percentage is applied to, and it is not always your gross. It includes salary, wages, fees, bonuses, shift allowance, overtime of either kind and any benefit your contract names as a pensionable emolument. It leaves out travel and subsistence allowances, pay in lieu of notice, money paid for giving up holiday and a car allowance. On a payslip with a large expenses line, pensionable pay sits noticeably below gross and that is correct.

Pension contribution, often shown as LGPS, Pension EE or Superann

Your band percentage of pensionable pay for that period. The rate is set for each employment separately, so a second council job has its own line on its own payslip at its own percentage. Divide the contribution by pensionable pay and on a single employment you should land on one of the nine published rates exactly. A number between two of them has more than one explanation: the deduction may have been taken on a different figure from the one printed, or two concurrent employments with the same employer may have been aggregated into one line, in which case the quotient is a blend of two correct rates rather than a mistake. Regulation 9(1) sets the rate in relation to an employment, so the first thing to establish is how many employments that line covers.

Taxable pay, and taxable pay to date

Lower than gross by the amount of the contribution. This is the net pay arrangement doing its work: the money leaves before income tax is calculated, so relief comes at your marginal rate with nothing to claim back. If taxable pay equals gross on a payslip that also shows an LGPS deduction, the deduction has been taken after tax and the relief has been missed.

National Insurance

Worked out on gross earnings with the pension contribution still in them. HMRC's National Insurance Manual puts it plainly: contributions are assessed on the gross before deduction of any pension contribution and there is no equivalent NI relief. So a 5.5% contribution cuts your tax bill and leaves your NI untouched, and the saving is smaller than the percentage suggests.

Section marker, often 50/50 or a second pension line

Payroll has to distinguish the two sections because the build-up rate differs, so a 50/50 member usually has either a different deduction description or a flag on the payslip. The clearest evidence is arithmetic rather than a label: in the 50/50 section the contribution is exactly half the published rate for your band.

Additional Pension Contributions (APC)

A separate deduction line buying a named amount of extra annual pension, up to £9,054 in 2026/27, spread over at least 12 months or paid as a lump sum. Taken from pay alongside the main contribution and before tax, so it gets relief the same way. It cannot run while you are in the 50/50 section, except where it is buying back pension lost in an authorised unpaid absence.

Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVC)

A second, separate line paying into an investment pot with the fund's AVC provider rather than into the pension account. Up to 100% of pensionable pay, deducted before tax, and allowed in either section. Watch for a Shared Cost AVC offered through salary sacrifice: that one is set up as a reduction in contractual pay, so it comes off before National Insurance as well, and gross itself is lower.

Employer contribution, where the payslip shows it

Information only. It is not deducted from you and it does not reduce your pay. The percentage is set for your employer alone by the triennial valuation of its fund, so it is not comparable with a colleague's at a different council and there is no national rate to check it against.

What goes wrong

A band set on the full-time rate instead of what you are paid

This is the single most common LGPS banding error and it costs money in only one direction. The band is the actual pensionable pay for the job, so a 0.6 full-time equivalent post on a grade paying £48,000 full time is banded on about £28,800 and pays 5.8%, not the 6.8% the full-time figure would attract. Payroll systems imported from a scheme that bands on full-time equivalent pay get this wrong at the point of migration and keep getting it wrong every April afterwards.

A band never looked at again after a pay rise or a change of hours

Regulation 9(3) lets your employer move you to a different band during the year where there is a change of employment or a material change affecting your pensionable pay, and it requires the employer to tell you the new rate and the date it starts. It is permissive in England and Wales, not automatic, and employers set their own policy on when they use it. So a promotion in July or a move from three days to five can leave you on last April's percentage until the following April. In Scotland the position is firmer: the employer must review the rate where a permanent material change to the terms and conditions affects pensionable pay.

A 50/50 election that ended without the member noticing

The election is cancelled by law from the beginning of the first pay period after your employer's automatic re-enrolment date, which comes round roughly every three years, and from the first pay period after you go on to no pay through sickness, injury or child-related leave if you are still on no pay then. Nothing has to be sent to you at that moment. The contribution simply doubles back to the full band rate on the next payslip, and a member who reads the net figure rather than the deduction line will see it as a pay cut with no cause.

Overtime left out of pensionable pay

Non-contractual overtime was excluded under the pre-2014 scheme and has been pensionable since 1 April 2014, which is a change old payroll rules and long memories both get wrong. The LGPS payroll guide states it in terms. Two consequences: contributions should be deducted from an overtime payment, and that payment counts toward the pay the band is set on at the next April review. The exception is a pre-2008 added years contract, which is still charged on the old definition and so still excludes non-contractual overtime.

Expecting a National Insurance saving that a net pay arrangement does not give

On the lowest band the arithmetic is worth doing. A member paid £18,000 pays 5.5%, which is £990 a year. Income tax is worked out on £17,010 rather than £18,000, so at 20% the contribution costs £792 net. National Insurance is not touched: it is still charged on the full £18,000. And if your total taxable income is below the personal allowance there is no income tax to relieve, so the full amount comes out of your pocket. Section 193A of the Finance Act 2004 now requires HMRC to pay a top-up to net pay arrangement savers in that position, from the 2024/25 tax year onwards, paid after the end of the tax year and taxable when it arrives.

A band set on pay that was reduced by an absence

Regulation 9(6) says a reduction in pensionable pay caused by a statutory entitlement during an absence, child-related leave, leave of absence with permission, sick leave, injury leave, reserve forces service leave or a trade dispute is disregarded when the rate is worked out, and the LGA repeats the instruction to employers each year. A member on half pay through sickness across the April pay period should not be dropped into a lower band on the strength of it. The lower band looks like a saving and is not: it is attached to a year in which the pension account is already being protected by assumed pensionable pay.

Two jobs treated as one

Regulation 9(1) sets the rate for an employment, and your employer sets it separately for each job you hold. Two part-time council posts are two pension accounts, two bandings and two contribution lines, and adding the two salaries together to find one band produces a higher percentage on both. The same logic runs the other way at retirement, because each account is worked out on its own pensionable pay.

What to check on your next payslip

• Regulation 9(1) fixes the rate on the annual pensionable pay you are receiving in the pay period that contains 1 April, or on the pay at the date you join if that is later, and the employer sets it separately for each employment. It tells you which payslip to look at when a percentage looks wrong. The April payslip is the evidence, not December's, and a second job is a separate question with a separate answer.
• Your employer decides the contribution rate and has to tell you what it is when you first join and every time it changes. That duty is what makes an unexplained change in the deduction line something to ask about. The LGPS's own guidance sends a contribution rate query to the employer's HR or payroll team rather than to the pension fund, because the fund did not set it.
• The pension fund has to send every active and deferred member an annual benefit statement by 31 August each year. It is the only document that shows what the year's contributions actually bought: the pension added to the account, the revaluation applied to the balance, and the pay figure the fund was told about. A statement that shows pensionable pay lower than the payslips did is where an overtime or allowance error surfaces.
• Regulation 9(4) and 9(5) reset every band boundary on the first day of the pay period containing 1 April, by the Pensions (Increase) Act 1971 amount, rounded down to the nearest £100 with £1 added to the first figure in each band except band 1. It explains a percentage that changes when your pay did not. The boundary moved up past you, or your pay rise moved you past the boundary, and both are normal rather than a payroll error.
• Regulation 10(7) puts a duty on the employer to give a member who elects to pay reduced contributions information about the effect on their likely benefits. The 50/50 section costs pension: 1/98th of pay goes into the account for that period instead of 1/49th, and that half is not recovered later. The duty exists because the cost is in a figure nobody sees for decades.
• Regulation 62 requires a valuation of each fund every three years and a rates and adjustments certificate setting a primary and a secondary employer rate for each Scheme employer, for each of the next three years. It is why there is no national employer percentage to compare against. Two employers in the same fund pay different rates for identical staff, and a figure quoted from another council tells you nothing about yours.
• The Scheme's internal disputes resolution procedure takes a written stage one complaint to the adjudicator of the body that made the decision, normally within six months of being notified of it, before the Pensions Ombudsman will look at anything. Contribution banding, pensionable pay and a refused election are all decisions with that route attached, and the six month clock starts from the notification rather than from the payslip where you spotted it.

The 17 occupations this reaches, and how

Each line is specific to that trade. Where a scheme depends on how you are engaged rather than on the work itself, the line says so.

Benefits Assessor

Housing benefit and council tax reduction are assessed by councils, so an assessor in a revenues and benefits team is an LGPS member; the same casework done for the Department for Work and Pensions is civil service employment and a different scheme entirely. Benefits teams run concentrated overtime around annual billing and year end, and since non-contractual overtime became pensionable in 2014 those extra hours attract a contribution and count toward the pay the following April's band is set from.

Building Control Officer

The registration regime that turned building control surveyors into registered building inspectors did not change which pension they are in, and the split runs down the same line it always did. An inspector in a council building control team is an LGPS member. An inspector doing identical plan checks and site inspections for a private building control approver is in that company's own arrangement, and moving between the two mid career leaves a deferred LGPS account behind rather than continuing one.

Care Worker

Most domiciliary and residential care in the UK is delivered by independent providers whose staff have an ordinary auto-enrolment pension, and being funded by a council is not the same as being employed by one. The scheme reaches this work two ways: a council that still runs in-house adult social care employs its care staff straight into it, and a provider holding an admission agreement for a contracted out service can offer it, though many such agreements only cover the staff whose jobs transferred across. Sleep-in and travel time payments are payments made to you, so where membership does apply they are inside the pensionable pay the percentage is taken from.

Cleaner

School and council cleaning has been contracted out for decades, and the admission agreement is what decides the answer on any given site. Where one is in place the scheme's own guidance is that some admission bodies allow membership only for employees whose job transferred to them from a local government employer, which produces the situation this trade is full of: two cleaners on the same corridor doing the same shift, one still in the LGPS from the transfer and one in the contractor's auto-enrolment scheme because they were hired afterwards. A directly employed school or council cleaner is simply a member.

Conservation Officer

Schedule 2 of the regulations lists a conservation board established under section 86 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and a National Park Authority established under Part 3 of the Environment Act 1995, as Scheme employers in their own right, so a post at either is inside the scheme exactly as a council post is. The large heritage and wildlife charities are outside it and run their own arrangements, and the only route to membership there is an admission agreement, which is frequently closed to everyone but the staff whose jobs transferred across.

Coroner's Officer

Both routes into this job reach the scheme, which is unusual. Coronial services are run by councils, and Schedule 2 makes the authority that appointed the coroner the Scheme employer for that service; separately, the eligibility list treats civilian staff of police authorities as local government employment. So a contract with the council's coroner service and a contract with the force running its coronial support team land in the same place. The second route is the one worth being precise about: a coroner's officer on a force payroll is civilian staff and is an LGPS member, not a member of the Police Pension Scheme that the warranted officers alongside them are in.

Ecologist

Most ecology in Britain is done from private consultancies and none of that work is pensioned here. Two public routes are, and one of them catches people out: the Environment Agency is written into Schedule 2 of the regulations as a Scheme employer, so its staff build up LGPS benefits rather than sitting in a civil service arrangement, while an ecologist on a council payroll is a member through the authority. Protected species survey work piles into the summer, and where those extra hours are paid rather than taken back as time off they attract a contribution and feed the following April's banding.

Electoral Services Officer

This is the one job in local government where the pensionable pay rules single out the work by name. Regulation 20(2)(j) throws returning officer and acting returning officer fees out of pensionable pay, and then carves four election types back in: local government elections, elections for the National Assembly for Wales, Parliamentary elections and European Parliamentary elections. So your salary is pensionable in the ordinary way, and whether the fee for running a poll joins it depends on which poll it was. A referendum or a police and crime commissioner election is not on that list.

Environmental Health Officer

Regulatory environmental health sits inside councils, and an officer on that payroll is a scheme member. An environmental health practitioner employed by a supermarket group, a food manufacturer or a private consultancy is not. The detail that catches this trade out is the out of hours rota: standby and callout payments for noise, filthy premises and emergency housing work are payments made to you and so are pensionable, which means a heavy run of night work in the year lifts the pay the band is read from at the next April reassessment.

Licensing Officer

Premises, alcohol, taxi and gambling licensing are council functions and the officers who run them are scheme members. The banding quirk here comes from how the work is staffed: late night enforcement visits and weekend taxi rank operations are frequently set up as a second, separate council contract rather than as overtime on the first. Where that happens you have two employments, and the rules require the employer to work out a contribution rate for each of them on its own pay, so a small second contract is banded at the bottom of the table.

Local Government Officer

Council employment is where this scheme starts: you are put into it on your first day rather than waiting to be auto-enrolled, and the Green Book grade you sit on decides the percentage only through the pay it actually produces. That is the thing worth understanding about a council payslip. Your band comes from the money in the April pay period for that post, so an acting-up payment, an honorarium or a market supplement is pensionable pay and can carry you over a boundary, while a mileage claim for the same month cannot because expenses allowances are outside the definition.

Planning Officer

Development management inside a council or a national park authority is scheme employment; the same casework for a planning consultancy acting for applicants is not. Evening committee work is where the pay definition bites. An allowance paid for attending a planning committee out of hours is a payment made to you and is pensionable, while the travel and subsistence you claim for a site visit the same week is expressly excluded, so two lines that look alike on the payslip are treated differently.

Registrar

Section 6 of the Registration Service Act 1953 makes every superintendent registrar and every registrar of births and deaths an officer of the council, which settles the pension question by statute rather than by custom. The pensionable pay definition then does something useful for this role: it opens with all the salary, wages, fees and other payments paid to the employee, and fees are in that list, so a fee paid to you by the council for conducting a weekend ceremony is part of the pay your contribution and your band are worked out on.

School Nurse

This role splits on the commissioner and the contract, not on the work. School nursing is commissioned by local authority public health, but a great deal of it is delivered by NHS community trusts and social enterprises under contract. The scheme's eligibility rule is that employees able to join the NHS pension scheme are generally barred from the LGPS, so a school nurse holding an NHS trust contract is in the NHS scheme, and one employed directly by the council's public health service is in the LGPS. Term time only pay annualised across twelve months is the actual pensionable pay the band is read from, which is lower than the headline whole year rate for the grade.

Social Worker

A social worker on a local authority's own payroll is in the LGPS. The same practitioner at an independent fostering agency, a private children's home provider or a locum agency is in whatever that employer runs, which is usually a defined contribution workplace pension with no band table behind it and no death in service cover at three times pay. The market supplement that councils bolt onto hard to recruit children's services posts, often shown as MSF, counts as pensionable pay, so two social workers on the same grade point can be banded differently purely on the supplement.

Trading Standards Officer

Consumer protection enforcement is a county and unitary authority function, so a qualified officer or an enforcement assistant in that service is in the scheme through the council that employs them. National programmes fund a great deal of this work, and funding is not employment: an officer working on a nationally funded scams or product safety project normally stays on the host authority's payroll, keeps the same pension account, and keeps the banding that the host authority sets each April.

Transport Planner

Employers in this field reach the scheme by three different routes, and the route decides what access looks like. A council or combined authority employs you straight into it. A passenger transport executive is a Scheme employer in its own right under Schedule 2 of the regulations. Transport for London is a designating body, which means membership is not automatic and has to be offered to you by name. A modelling consultancy is none of the three, so a move from a highways authority into consultancy ends the build-up rather than carrying it across.

Questions

Sources