Most of the time, LGPS membership means paying your normal contribution rate and building up your normal share of pension each year. But the scheme also includes a genuinely flexible option that's fairly unusual among UK pension schemes: the 50/50 section. Rather than facing an all-or-nothing choice between staying in the LGPS at full cost or opting out altogether and losing your employer's contribution and valuable protections, the 50/50 option lets you pay half your normal contribution rate in exchange for building up half your normal pension for that period. It's designed as a safety valve for exactly the kind of temporary financial squeeze most people experience at some point in their working life, and understanding how it works — and what it doesn't affect — can make a real difference to a decision that's often made in a hurry.
What exactly is the 50/50 option?
The 50/50 option is a scheme feature unique to the LGPS among the major UK public sector schemes, that lets an active member elect to move from the main section into the 50/50 section at almost any time. While in 50/50, you pay exactly half of whatever your normal contribution rate would be under the main section, and in return, you build up pension at half the normal rate — so instead of 1/49th of your pensionable pay each year, you build up 1/98th.
It's important to understand what 50/50 is not: it isn't opting out of the scheme entirely, and it isn't a permanent change to your membership. It's better thought of as a temporary gear change — a way to reduce the immediate cost of pension saving during a specific period without leaving the scheme, losing your employer's contribution altogether, or giving up the valuable non-pension benefits that come bundled with LGPS membership.
Why 50/50 is usually so much better than opting out
This is the single most important thing to understand about the 50/50 option, and it's the reason the scheme created it in the first place: your life assurance and ill-health protection continue at the FULL level while you're in the 50/50 section. If you die while an active 50/50 member, your family still receives the full death-in-service lump sum (typically three times your annual pensionable pay) and survivor benefits calculated in exactly the same way as if you were in the main section. If you become permanently unable to work through ill health, your ill-health retirement benefits are also assessed and enhanced in the same way as for a main section member.
Compare that with opting out of the LGPS altogether. If you opt out, you lose the death-in-service lump sum and survivor benefits entirely, along with your employer's contribution, and you stop building up any further pension at all. The 50/50 option gives you a middle path: it only reduces the rate at which you build up your ongoing retirement pension, while leaving the protection side of your membership completely untouched. For most people facing a temporary cost pressure, that makes 50/50 a considerably better choice than opting out, provided they can still afford the reduced (but not zero) contribution. Our guide on opting out of auto-enrolment covers the equivalent trade-offs for members of other workplace schemes.
When members typically choose 50/50
50/50 tends to suit specific, usually temporary, situations rather than being a long-term default. Common examples include a period of unpaid or reduced-pay maternity, paternity, adoption, or shared parental leave, when take-home pay is already reduced and every deduction matters — see our guide on pensions and maternity leave for how contributions generally work during this time; a period of financial hardship following a change in personal circumstances, such as a change in household income or an unexpected large expense; or simply a general cost-of-living squeeze where a member wants to keep saving into their pension, just at a lower rate, rather than stopping altogether. Because 50/50 is designed to be easy to move in and out of, it works well as a short-term adjustment rather than a permanent strategy — most members who use it do so for a defined period and then return to the main section once their circumstances improve.
How and when you can move between sections
You can normally elect to move into the 50/50 section, or back into the main section, at more or less any time, simply by giving notice to your employer using the scheme's standard election form. A move into 50/50 usually takes effect from your employer's next available pay period, and a move back to the main section works the same way, so you're not locked into either section for a fixed minimum period.
There's also an important safeguard built into the scheme design: employers are required to automatically move a member back into the main section at each scheme re-assessment point (broadly, each time automatic re-enrolment duties are assessed, roughly every three years) unless the member actively re-elects to stay in 50/50. This default-back-to-main-section rule exists precisely to stop 50/50 becoming an unintentional long-term drift into under-saving — it treats 50/50 as a deliberate, actively renewed choice rather than something a member can simply forget about indefinitely.
Worked example: main section vs 50/50
Consider Aisha, who earns £24,000 a year as a council administrator and falls into a contribution band where her normal LGPS rate is 6.5% of pay. Under the main section, she pays £1,560 a year (£130 a month) and builds up 1/49th of her pensionable pay in pension for that year — around £490. If she elects for 50/50 for a year, perhaps to cover a period of reduced hours after returning from maternity leave, she instead pays £780 a year (£65 a month), roughly half her normal contribution, and builds up half the pension — around £245 for that year. Crucially, throughout that 50/50 year, her death-in-service lump sum and any ill-health retirement assessment continue to be based on her full pensionable pay, exactly as if she were still in the main section.
What happens to your 50/50 pension when you retire
When you eventually come to draw your LGPS pension, whatever you built up while in the main section and whatever you built up while in the 50/50 section are simply added together as part of your total pension — there's no separate pot or different retirement date for 50/50 service. Each year's accrual, whether earned at the full or the half rate, is revalued annually in exactly the same way, so moving between the two sections during your career doesn't complicate how your final pension is worked out; it just means some years contributed a smaller slice than others. This is one of the reasons 50/50 is considered such a flexible tool — you can dip in and out of it as your circumstances change without creating any lasting administrative complication for your eventual retirement benefits.
Is 50/50 right for a particular situation?
Because 50/50 only changes the rate at which you build up future pension — and leaves your accrued pension, your death-in-service cover, and your ill-health protection fully intact — it's generally considered a lower-risk way to reduce pension costs than opting out altogether. Whether it makes sense for a particular set of circumstances depends on factors like how long the financial pressure is likely to last, whether the reduced contribution is genuinely more manageable, and how the reduced accrual might affect long-term retirement plans. This guide explains how the mechanism works rather than recommending a course of action; anyone considering a change to their LGPS membership should check their own scheme booklet or contact their pension fund administrator for figures specific to their own pay and circumstances.
This guide explains how the 50/50 option works in general terms; it isn't financial advice. For free, impartial guidance about your pension options, visit MoneyHelper.
Does 50/50 affect your State Pension?
No — the 50/50 option only changes how much you pay into, and build up in, your LGPS pension specifically. It has no bearing on your National Insurance record or your entitlement to the State Pension, provided you continue to meet the normal National Insurance qualifying conditions through your employment in the usual way. This is worth knowing because it means the decision to move to 50/50 can be made purely on the basis of your LGPS membership and household finances, without needing to weigh up any separate effect on your State Pension position.
How your employer manages 50/50 elections
In practice, moving to or from the 50/50 section usually involves completing a simple election form provided by your employer or LGPS fund, which is then processed through payroll from the next available pay period. Employers are required under the scheme regulations to provide members with information about the 50/50 option, generally at the point they're automatically enrolled or re-enrolled into the main section, precisely so that members facing a temporary cost squeeze are aware a lower-cost alternative to opting out entirely exists.
Employers also carry the administrative responsibility for tracking who is in the 50/50 section and applying the automatic move back to the main section at the correct re-assessment point, which usually aligns with the employer's automatic re-enrolment date. If you elect for 50/50 and later change employer within the LGPS, it's worth checking with your new employer's payroll or HR team whether your 50/50 election carries across automatically or whether you need to make a fresh election, since this can vary depending on how the specific transfer between LGPS employers is administered.
Keeping track of your 50/50 elections over time
Because 50/50 is designed to be used flexibly, some members move between the main section and 50/50 more than once over the course of a career, particularly around life events like having children, changing role, or periods of financial pressure. Your annual benefit statement, issued each year by your LGPS fund, should show which section you were in and for how long, alongside your total accrued pension, which makes it a useful way to keep track of your own history if you've used 50/50 at various points.
If anything on your annual statement looks unexpected — for example, if you believe you should have been automatically moved back to the main section but weren't — it's worth raising this with your pension fund administrator promptly, since correcting historic contribution and accrual records generally gets more straightforward the sooner any discrepancy is identified.
50/50 and part-time or variable hours
If you already work part-time, or your hours vary from week to week, the 50/50 option still works in exactly the same way: your contribution and accrual are both based on whatever your actual pensionable pay happens to be for that period, simply at half the normal rate rather than the full rate. This means part-time and variable-hours workers aren't disadvantaged in how the 50/50 mechanism itself operates, though the smaller absolute amounts involved for someone already working reduced hours are worth bearing in mind when weighing up whether the saving from moving to 50/50 is meaningful relative to your overall budget.
For members whose hours change frequently — for example, through zero-hours or highly variable shift patterns common in some council-run services — it's worth checking with payroll exactly how contribution and accrual calculations are applied period by period, since the practicalities of administering 50/50 alongside genuinely variable pay can differ slightly between employers even though the underlying scheme rule is consistent nationally.
Common misunderstandings about the 50/50 option
One common misunderstanding is that moving to 50/50 somehow reduces the pension you've already built up — it doesn't. Your accrued pension from before the move, and any pension you build up after moving back to the main section, is entirely unaffected; 50/50 only changes the rate of accrual for the specific period you're actually in that section. Another misconception is that 50/50 is only available to certain groups of employees, such as part-time staff — in fact, it's available to any active LGPS member, regardless of their working pattern, employer, or reason for wanting to reduce their contribution rate temporarily.
A third misunderstanding worth clearing up is that some members assume moving to 50/50 requires a lengthy application or approval process. In reality, it's normally just a straightforward election made directly with your employer, without needing approval from the pension fund itself, which is part of what makes 50/50 such a genuinely accessible option compared with some other pension flexibilities that require more formal sign-off.
50/50 alongside other household budgeting decisions
Because 50/50 sits within a wider set of choices households make when money is tight — such as reviewing other subscriptions, adjusting savings contributions, or renegotiating bills — it's often considered alongside these other decisions rather than in isolation. Unlike many of those other adjustments, though, 50/50 has the specific advantage of being fully reversible at will and of preserving your most valuable protections in full, which is why many members and financial guidance services treat it as one of the more attractive levers to pull before considering reducing other essential costs, or before opting out of pension saving altogether.
As with any decision affecting your income and long-term saving, it's sensible to review the position periodically rather than treating an initial 50/50 election as permanent by default — precisely because the scheme's own automatic re-assessment rule is designed to prompt exactly this kind of periodic review, rather than letting reduced pension saving become an unnoticed long-term habit.