Government to "fix" Virgin Media pensions issue

The proposed legislation will allow affected schemes to retrospectively obtain written actuarial confirmation that historic changes did not reduce benefits below the minimum statutory level. The move will provide trustees and scheme sponsors with much-needed certainty about their scheme's liabilities and member benefits and remove what has become an obstacle to completing de-risking projects.

We applaud the Government for taking this initiative to remove what, in many cases, would be the wholly disproportionate impact of a pension scheme failing to get its paperwork correct, in a way which had no detrimental impact on members.

Further Information

The full DWP announcement can be accessed here: Retrospective actuarial confirmation of benefit changes – GOV.UK

For further insights or legal advice on how this development may affect your pension scheme, please contact Fieldfisher’s Pensions team.