Pension consultation launched – News – agediscrimination.info

The government has launched the promised consultation on amending the pension provisions of the age regulations to make them ‘clearer and more operable by schemes and employers’.

New amending regulations have been published, which aim to expand the pension exemptions in the main Age Regulations, reflecting the DWP’s intention to allow pension schemes to continue to run as normal, as far as possible.

Some of the main changes include:

• a specific exemption for enhanced early retirement pensions on redundancy, under an occupational pension scheme;
• the ability for occupational schemes to enhance early retirement ill-health provisions by crediting members with additional years’ service, or by not making reductions to benefits for early payment;
• the setting of minimum ages for employees to receive employer contributions to personal pension schemes (which would include Group Personal Pension (GPP) schemes), including setting different ages for different groups of workers; and
• the ability to limit contributions to personal pensions (again, including GPPs) by reference to a maximum level of remuneration.

The consultation period closed on 20 October 2006 and the DWP will now consider the submissions received. Further information will appear here when the DWP gives its response.

The consultation paper (which includes the amending regulations) is available on the DWP website – follow this link.

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