Another Gotcha
Come next April those newly drawing pensions will discover another subtlety of the system.
The first annual pension increase is factored by the time between retirement date and the day of the increase, so those who retire later in the financial year get a smaller pension the following year (and every year thereafter) than those who retire earlier in the year. This despite a nominal pension revision once a year to take up inflation, which builds up over the year, but the later you retire in the year the less the first increase accounts for inflation. When I queried this, I was told it was due to an announcement in parliament by Maggie and that there was no way out of it.
And if they are still staging pay rises like they were in the year when I retired, those who retire before the 2nd stage only get the stage 1 pension.
In my case this amounted to an initial reduction of several hundred pounds a year compared to the full award.