About The Scheme
Careers in the housing association sector can be personally satisfying because you can make a genuine difference to people's lives.
Rapid growth in the sector, as it takes over from local authorities as the main provider of social housing, has brought thousands of new job opportunities. Supporting the expansion has been the availability of a formal pensions structure in which the Scottish Housing Associations' Pension Scheme (SHAPS) remains the leading private sector provider, serving more than 8,000 members and pensioners and over 150 different housing groups. A key advantage of the Scottish Housing Associations' Pension Scheme is that it allows you to switch between participating employers without any loss of pensionable service, clearing the way for you to follow your own career path, without losing out, and therefore helping to spread knowledge and experience throughout the sector.
The Scheme offers members a wide range of benefits including:
A pension payable from retirement for the rest of
your life, relates to your
final earnings at
retirement (for some
members) your
average earnings in employment. |
Life Assurance Cover |
Dependants' Pension Benefits (Survivor's & Children's Pensions) |
Ill-health Pension Benefits |
Four of the five benefit options available within the Scheme are contracted out of the additional State pension (the State Second Pension Scheme -formerly SERPS), so both members and employers pay lower National Insurance contributions. The Career Average Related Salary (CARE) 120th option is contracted in therefore members and employer pay full National Insurance contributions
As a multi-employer scheme the Scottish Housing Associations' Pension Scheme offers employers a number of advantages over a separate stand alone scheme:
- Administration costs are shared between all participating employers, allowing employers and their employees to benefit from a range of services at a low cost.
- Straightforward compliance with the accounting standard FRS17, as multi-employer schemes are able to take advantage of greatly reduced reporting requirements.
- An elected pensions committee deals with the funding and policy issues of the Scheme.
- The Scheme assists recruitment and retention of staff by providing a vehicle that allows continuity of service for members making a career in the social housing sector.
- Employers offering the Scottish Housing Associations' Pension Scheme to members can do so with minimal resource impact. All an Employer is required to do is to collect and pay monthly contributions and tell the administrators about joiners, leavers and changes in employees' hours and earnings. The administrator (The Pensions Trust) will do all the rest.