Employer bulletin April 2026

The Local Government Association (LGA) has published further guidance on the LGPS changes following the Access and Fairness consultation. Please review this guidance and take any action necessary. You can find it in Bulletin 276 Access and Fairness changes. 

We have notified contributing and benefit on hold members of the changes and updated our Important updates to the LGPS - GMPF webpage.

We held information sessions about these changes throughout April and we will be holding more of these during May and June. You can book on these by visiting the events section page of our employer website.

Thank you if you have already responded to the year-end queries we sent you. If you have not yet responded, please do so before the deadline we gave you or get in touch with us as soon as possible.

Your March submission is critical in calculating pension accruals for the year and members’ current and projected benefits shown in their annual benefit statements. As such, the information provided must be accurate, and any queries must be responded to urgently.

If you need our help, please contact iconnect@gmpf.org.uk

Next month, we are planning to update the My Pension platform, being the system members use to access their pension account online. This update will require members to re-register for the service.

We know many of you have put a lot of effort into encouraging registrations, and that work has made a real difference. It’s helped build strong engagement with the portal, and we expect members to re register quickly with the improved system.

To support this, we’ve developed a targeted 12-month communications campaign aimed at helping registrations return to their current levels and continue to grow. We’ll be sharing materials and updates with you throughout this period so you can easily pass information on to your teams.

We have recently updated and republished the Pension Administration Strategy. This document outlines the responsibilities of both the administering authority and our employers.

Please ensure you are aware of your responsibilities, as set out in the latest version - see Pension Administration Strategy. 

On 10 April 2026, we sent you an email to let you know that the GMPF Funding Strategy Statement and Valuation Report were available on our website following the closure of the 2025 triennial actuarial valuation process.

We issued a draft Funding Strategy Statement to employers for consultation in September 2025. The email we sent included details of the responses to the comments and suggestions raised during the consultation process.

You can find a copy of the email at LGPS Email alert - Funding Strategy Statement 2025 - GMPF

We continue to run employer training workshops on several topics. These sessions may be helpful if you are new or want to refresh your knowledge on subjects such as ill health, pensionable pay, retirements, leavers, topping up benefits, and employer discretions.

You can book by visiting the events section of the employer website. Spaces are limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.  

You can also access recordings of all these sessions on our website. You can do this any time and will find them under training webinars on the technical and training guides page of our employer website.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has published Bulletin 275.

You can access Bulletin 275 and all previous LGPC bulletins by clicking here. 

The latest publications from our Actuary, Hymans Robertson, are available. The webpage allows you to filter subjects and audience types easily so you can read the publications that are of interest to you.