It issued a formal letter before claim last week for judicial review proceedings. The Treasury and Secretary of State have until 19 November to respond.
The Court of Appeal cases, Ministry of Justice v McCloud and Home Secretary v Sargeant [2018] EWCA Civ 2844 found the government’s public sector pension reforms discriminated against both judges and firefighters based on their ages on 1 April 2012.
Younger firefighters were required to leave the scheme and join a new 2015 scheme. FBU national officer Mark Rowe said the government is seeking to impose the cost of the discrimination onto those on the 2015 scheme.
Rowe said: ‘It is unbelievable that the government is trying to make firefighters pay for their own discrimination, and unbelievable that it is forcing firefighters to come back to the courts time and time again to try and win pension justice.
‘The government is trying to make these firefighters pay via a scheme in their pensions called “cost control”. Cost control adjusts pension contributions or benefits if the actual cost of the pension scheme diverges from the target cost of the pension scheme by 2% or more, with firefighters losing out if the actual cost is higher.’
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