Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that Pension Sharing Orders administered by Teachers’ Pensions are processed within stated timeframes.

Pension scheme administrators have four months to implement pension sharing orders (PSOs), however the department is aware that for some members of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, this timescale has been affected by the transitional protection remedy.

In some cases, there has been outstanding guidance whereby the scheme administrator could not progress PSOs until this was received, and other cases require responses from the member before they can be implemented.

The department is in regular discussion with the scheme administrator to consider the issues which have prevented some PSOs being issued to the normal timescales and will continue to closely monitor performance.