I cannot agree with Alastair Hatchett’s view that public sector pensions are not ‘gold-plated’. To earn the average local authority pension of £4,000 (plus inflation), staff will have contributed around £20,000 at current prices to their schemes.
Other schemes provide even more favourable benefits, such as an earlier retirement age with lower employee contributions.
Employees in the private sector who depend on personal plans will have to pay well over £100,000 for a similar pension. Even then they will not have the added benefits of schemes in the event of redundancy, ill-health retirement and death in service.
If they believe that their public sector counterparts have gold-plated pension arrangements, I would have to agree with them
