Pensions Weekly Update

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Here is our weekly summary of key legal and regulatory developments relevant to occupational pension schemes that you might have missed, with links for further information.

The National Audit Office has released a report on its investigation into the delays which led to the “reset” of pensions dashboards, which was announced in March 2023. The estimated cost to the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) of delivering the Pensions Dashboards Programme has increased from £235 million in 2020 to £289 million in 2023, while the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) now estimates that the cost to pension schemes and providers will be around £688 million (a £162 million decrease from its 2022 estimate). The report notes that the DWP and MaPS have now made progress towards addressing the underlying issues that led to the dashboards reset.
A House of Commons briefing paper has been published on defined benefit pension superfunds. This is a useful resource if you need to know the background to superfunds and where we are with the legislative process (there is no legislation in place yet, but the government has committed to introducing legislation in relation to superfunds when parliamentary time allows).
We note with interest that the Labour party does not currently have a shadow pensions minister. After a recent report that Gill Furniss had resigned from the role, she has now been removed from the DWP departmental team on the Labour party website (and has not yet been replaced).
As part of our blog series looking at the general code of practice in bite-sized chunks, director Anna Tomlinson continues the theme of adopting a proportionate approach to compliance and considers how to assess whether a scheme has 100 members (and is therefore subject to requirements such as the Own Risk Assessment).

If you would like specific advice on any of these issues or anything else, please contact a member of our Pensions team.