From the first Monday in July, your contributions to the RPS for the following 12 months are calculated based upon your pensionable pay as at 1st April 2025.
In 2024, due to the delay in payment of the pay award, your contribution pay on 1st April would still have been your pensionable pay effective from 1st January 2023, as the Band 5-8 and Maintenance grades pay award was not paid until October 2024.
As the pay award has been paid much quicker this year, and your pensionable pay as at 1st January 2025 had been agreed in time for the annual process of calculating your RPS contributions, this will be included in your contributions from July 2025.
For example:
Mr Smith had a pensionable pay of £35,000 on 1st October 2022.
In July 2023, £35,000 was used to calculate Mr Smith’s RPS contributions for the following 12 months.
In July 2024, Mr Smith’s pensionable pay hadn’t increased and was still set at £35,000 and this was then used to calculated his pension contributions from July 2024 for the following 12 months.
In December 2024, Mr Smith received a backdated pay award, increasing his pensionable pay to £36,575. As this was after July, and his contributions had already been calculated and fixed for RPS, his contributions did not change.
Effective from 1st January 2025, and paid in July 2025, Mr Smith received another pay award and his pensionable pay increased to £37,891. As this was before the contributions were calculated in July 2025, from July 2025 the contributions that Mr Smith pays will be based on his pensionable pay of £37,891.
The 1st January 2024 is therefore not included in any of his RPS contributions, as the 1st January 2025 pay award is instead used from July 2025
