"PFEW Pension Compensation Claims " update from Penningtons Manches Cooper LPP

11 December 2020

Those members who have been notified that they are eligible to be involved in the group claim should read the below from Penningtons Manches Cooper LPP

I am writing to provide an update on the Pension Claims and to provide some information which may assist you in dealing with queries from your members.

I am pleased to confirm that the claims were presented to the Employment Tribunal this week.  Two claims were presented; one for the unprotected group and one for the tapered group.  We were unable to issue the claims online as the Tribunal’s system could not cope with receiving an excel spreadsheet with 38,000 members’ listed. It was therefore faithfully hand delivered, in 9 large boxes, by one of our trusted Associates, Rebecca Foster.  The claims will now be processed by the ET and then served on the Chief Officers and the Home Secretary.

Given the size of the group, we have set up an extranet site, called “PFEW Pension Compensation Claims”, through which we will provided members with updates on the claims.  Members have previously been advised by PFEW that they will need to sign up to the site to receive updates from us.  They have also been informed that they will receive an invitation from Charlene Robertson at Penningtons Manches Cooper to the extranet site and they have been advised to check their spam/junk folders in case the email ends up in there.

This week, Charlene started the process of sending out the invitations. This is being done in batches by force, to ensure there are no glitches. As of last night, she had sent out around 15,000 invitations.  She is going to continue sending these out over the next few days and we hope that all will have been sent by Monday.   

Despite being advised to expect to receive this communication, these email invitations have generated a number of queries via email/phone/twitter from members.  Please can you assure your members that this is a legitimate email and that if they want to receive updates on the claims, they will need to accept the invitation to sign up to the site.  I have copied at the bottom of this email an example of the email members will receive.

Given the size of the group, the email Charlene generates to send the invitation is automated. The emails are automatically addressed to the name part of the email address members have provided. As most members have provided personal email addresses, some of these involve nicknames or shortened versions of their actual names.   We have had a few complaints about this, and we have explained that given the scale of the group and the automated process, it is not possible to send 38,000 bespoke emails.

We have set up a bespoke email address for queries about the pension claims and members should be advised to only use that to email us about the pension matter so that we can track the queries and action them in an orderly way. The email address is: policepensionclaims@penningtonslaw.com

Please can you share the information in this email with your members to assist us in managing the flow of queries we are receiving.

Kind regards

Anthea Christie
Partner, Employment