I joined the police in 1999, and when I joined my retirement age to get the police pension was 55. I left in 2011 when my children came along and the pension was deferred.

All my statements continued to indicate that the pension was still payable in 2027, when I reach 55. I have paperwork showing this. I recently requested an up-to-date statement and again it said age 55 and 2027.

When I asked a few more questions about my lump sum the scheme noticed an error on their side.

The pension is now apparently not payable until I am 60, and they apologised for the error and inconvenience.

I have planned a lot around this retirement age. My mortgage is due to be paid off using some of my lump sum, and also a loan my husband and I took out with the police when we first joined as a deposit for our first home.

This has to be paid back when my husband retires next year. Is there anything I can do about this?

It is shocking that there has been a repeated error on such a fundamental piece of information, namely the age at which you can draw your pension.

Unfortunately, even though you have consistently received incorrect information, there is no way of forcing the scheme to pay a pension which would be in breach of the rules of the scheme and the regulations which govern it.

By way of background, many pension schemes have different ‘sections’.

This is especially common in public sector pension schemes where there have been various reforms over the years.

When change is made, it sometimes only applies to new joiners after a certain date, and a new ‘section’ with different rules is set up for them.

In the case of the Police Pension Scheme, there are three main sections – the 1987 scheme, which applied when you joined, the 2006 scheme and the (current) 2015 scheme.

More detail for the Police Pension Scheme can be found here: Police Pension Scheme overview.

The retirement age rules for the 1987 section of the police scheme are slightly complicated, and partly reflect the demands made upon long-serving frontline police officers.

Under the 1987 section, those with 30 years of continuous service could receive a pension as early as 50 in some cases (though obviously they would have had to join the police at a young age).

But what is unusual about the rules for this section is that those, such as yourself, who left the police service well before retirement age (and with less than 25 years’ service), could then only draw their pension at age 60.

In other words, the pension age for ‘active’ members who retire from active service is lower than the pension age for ‘deferred’ members.

You have shared with me some of the statements you have received, and they say very clearly on the front page that you can draw your pension at age 55, in 2027.

But a later part of the same statement gave a pension age of 60, in 2032.

To be honest, if the cover page of a statement tells you how much pension you are going to get and when you are going to get it, I can entirely understand why that was what you expected.

And this is especially the case given that you have repeatedly been given the same information.

What is particularly distressing is that you only found out this information earlier this year, on the eve of what you thought was going to be your retirement. This has put your financial planning in a very difficult place.

Where I have come across cases like this before, one thing that schemes often point out is that on joining the scheme you would have been given a scheme booklet.

This booklet would set out all the rules of the scheme, including pension age.

But, as a new recruit to the police service, no doubt given lots of paperwork on joining, I very much doubt that studying the pension booklet would have been a priority.

Following your complaint, the administrators of the scheme wrote to you and you have shared with me their letter.

In it they accept that they made an administrative error and have apologised.

They have offered you a ‘goodwill’ payment of £200 which reflects what is known in the pensions industry as a payment for ‘distress and inconvenience’.

This obviously in no way reflects the value of the five years of pension which you were expecting and will not be receiving, but is a token payment to acknowledge that this has been a difficult and upsetting process.

You are considering whether or not to accept this £200 offer.

One option would be to decline the offer and make a complaint to the Pensions Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman can recommend its own figure for ‘distress and inconvenience’ and there is a helpful guidance note which explains the sliding scale of payments which it may recommend if it finds maladministration: Redress for non-financial injustice.

Note however that this was issued back in 2018 and is currently under review.

As you will see, if an award is made it can range from £500 for ‘significant’ distress to £2,000 for ‘severe’ cases, with more in exceptional cases.

The guide gives some examples and definitions of each category.

However, whilst there is a possibility that if you went to the Ombudsman you might be awarded a larger figure, it could be nearly a year before the Ombudsman even looks at the case and there is no guarantee of a better outcome.

With regard to the issues you have faced, I put your concerns to the administrator, XPS Group, and a spokesman said:

'We are sorry that your reader had conflicting retirement dates held on her administration record, resulting in incorrect information on part of her benefit statement.

'That error has now been corrected. We have apologised to your reader for our handling of her case and have offered compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused, and regret that her concerns were not addressed more promptly through our correspondence.'