Retirement

By law, the earliest age that you can take a pension under any scheme is at 55 years old, except in cases of ill-health retirement. Rules on taking early retirement vary with the different pension schemes so please contact your pension provider for further information.

The CPAS, CRSP and Stakeholder pension schemes do not have an option to draw a percentage of your pension early and continue to contribute to the scheme. If you are a member of the CRSP scheme, you may take your pension early and continue in your role but you would have to take the full pension at the actuarially-reduced rate.

The USS pension scheme offers a flexible retirement, subject to the consent of the University. This means that from age 55, you will be able to draw between 20% and 80% of the pension and lump sum that has been built up, whilst you continue in pensionable employment. Your working hours and salary must both be reduced by a percentage between a minimum of 20% and the maximum of 80% accordingly. The reduction to working hours and salary must be for a minimum of twelve months.

You will be permitted to have a maximum of two flexible retirements before drawing the entirety of your USS benefits on a third occasion. Whenever benefits are drawn before Normal Pension Age, under the proposed flexible retirement arrangements, the amount payable would be reduced for early retirement.

Future pensionable benefits will accrue in line with the usual rules for part-time employment. For example you would accrue half a year’s pensionable service for each year worked if you reduced your hours to 50% of full-time.

All members of staff are able to retire and then apply for a different job with us. You may not be able to rejoin the same pension scheme and should contact your pension provider for further information on this.

In exceptional circumstances, an academic member of staff may wish to return to work with us for a specific reason, such as to run a module or finish supervision of existing PhD students. In these circumstances the Head of School would need to write a business case and gain support from the Dean and relevant PVC. The final decision would be made by Management Board. The member of staff would not be able to continue contributions to USS and would be offered the stakeholder pension scheme. From October 2011, USS will offer a flexible retirement option, which may be appropriate for such cases.

If you are in a pension scheme, and you have a medical condition that is permanent or likely to last until 65 years of age, you may wish to consider making an application for ill-health retirement by contacting the HR Employment Relations team. The CRSP pension scheme has no enhanced provision for ill-health retirement.