What's Happening In Pensions - Issue 118

1. Virgin Media legislative remedy

The Government has published amendments to the Pension Schemes Bill to address issues arising from of the Court of Appeal's decision in the Virgin Media case. This decision called into question the validity of past alterations made to salary-related contracted out occupational pension schemes, without the prior actuarial confirmation required being given (see our alert and Q&As for further detail on the decision).

The draft provisions set out a mechanism which would enable affected pension schemes to retrospectively obtain written actuarial confirmation that historical benefit changes met the necessary standards where they meet the conditions to be a “potentially remediable alteration”. Broadly this means that the alteration would have needed an actuarial confirmation when it was made, the trustees treated the amendment as a valid alteration, the trustees have not taken any "positive action" on the basis that they consider the