Reform of police pensions in England and Wales

We analyse pension reforms for police officers in England and Wales using force-level data. We quantify the impact on overall police pension plan liabilities, examining incidence across police officers, national and local taxpayers. We also examine reforms of retirement rules, especially concerning early retirement on grounds of ill-health. Differences in ill-health retirement across forces are statistically related to area-specific stresses of policing and force-specific human resource policies. Reforms in 2006 impacted primarily on the level of ill-health retirement among forces with above-average rates of early retirement. We find that residual differences in post-2006 ill-health retirement rates across forces are related to differential capacities to raise revenue from local property taxes.