Article 7 Exercise by local authority of discretionary powers to increase benefits

Where an officerbecomes a civil servant after leaving local government employment and these rules have become applicable in relation to him, the employing authority may, within three months after the date on which they are informed by the Head of the Department in which he is emloyed as a civil servant of his notification that he desires these rules to apply to him, exercise in relation to him any discretion which, with a view to increasing the benefits payable to him, it would have been open to them to exercise at the time when he left their employment if he had then retired and had been entitled to a retirement pension under regulation 5 of the benefits regulations or to any corresponding benefit provided under the superannuation provisions which were applicable to him in his former employment.

A decision made in the exercise of any discretion under the last preceding paragraph shall be subject to the limitations and restrictions (if any) and to the right of appeal (if any) to which it woul have been subject if the discretion had been exercised on the peson's retirement in the circumstances aforesaid.

Where a discretion has been so exercised, the service reckonable by the officer immediately before he left local government shall be deemed to have been correspondingly increased, and the transfer value payable in respect of him shall be calculated accordingly.

Any increase in service, if attributable to a decision under this rule to increase the benefits payable to the person otherwise than by any notional increase or extension of the service reckonable for the purpose of calculating those benefits, or by treating any specified period of non-contributing service as a contributing service, or, under a local Act scheme, by similarly converting service of one category to service of another category, shall be ascertained by converting the service in respect of which the higher rate of benefit is payable into contributing service, or service for the relevant local Act scheme, in the manner in which non-contributing service under section 2(4) of the Act of 1953.

Where the amount of any transfer value payable under rule 5 of these rules is increased in consequence of the exercise by the employing authority of any power conferred upon them by paragraph (1) of this rule, that authority shall repay the amount of the said increase to the superannuation fund out of which the transfer is payable.