Thanks for that Highlander. The document you quoted from is a Trade Union document and your quotation is aimed at those who have not opted out of LG PS. Many school employees, or low paid employees of LG opt out. Most members of Unison in LG are very low paid I.e. MDAs (dinner ladies), cleaners, clerical assists. Etc. The higher money earning employees, in Education or Social Services, or higher level admin are not members of Unison and the "professionals" do not Subscribe to LGPS, they have their own pension schemes. Just because Unison say that the employer can agree to these extras,I have yet to see it happen and most of the categories I have mentioned on low pay, do not earn that much in a year,let alone have it as an extra annual bunce.
I remember that another Trade Union was aggressively canvassing LG employees to leave Unison (if they already belonged or trying to sign them up). The name of the union escapes me at the minute but they were quite a lot more militant than Unison.
I was interested to see that the law now requires payments to be made up to 20 years service. I am sure when I was involved it was up to a maximum of 12 years, at least something seems to have improved.
P.S. Working through that whole consultation and selection process added together with the notice period took a minimum of 9 months and it was, without exception, the very worst aspect of my job!