The Court of Appeal has granted unions permission to appeal against the recent High Court judgment over the government’s proposed method of paying for costs incurred by the McCloud ruling in relation to public sector pension schemes.

The High Court previously dismissed the case after the Judge, Justice Choudhury, concluded that the legal bases on which the claims was brought were not made out.

The case was brought by the FBU and two named claimants, although the British Medical Association’s (BMA) claim was heard together with this due to overlap.

Alongside this, five further trade unions were named as interested parties to the case. These are GMB, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Prison Officers Association, the Royal College of Nursing and Unite.

The case relates to the McCloud ruling, which found that the 2015 changes to public sector schemes that saw younger members transfer to a new and worse scheme, while older members remained in the existing and better scheme.

In its claim, the FBU argued that the government was attempting to “shift” the estimated £17bn that it is going to cost to reverse the changes onto members of the new, post-2015 public sector schemes, warning that this could leave younger scheme members to meet the cost of the McCloud remedy.

While the judicial review was dismissed, PCS confirmed that the Court of Appeal has granted permission to appeal the High Court ruling on the claim that pension contributions must be reduced following the valuation that showed that pension costs were higher than necessary.

"PCS is joined by five other unions in this legal action and we are now checking on the likely timing of the appeal hearing," it stated.

The FBU also previously confirmed that it would be looking at the merits of any appeal, with FBU national officer, Mark Rowe, emphasising that "the majority, if not all of our pensions challenges against government have not been successful at the first hurdle but we have achieved greater success on appeal".

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