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Insight Magazine 55 Autumn 2026

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Inside This Issue (clickable list of contents)
  1. Letter from the Chairman –Autumn 2026
  2. A Bucket List Experience – a story from Alan Dennison
  3. Chevron UK Pensioners Association Annual General Meeting 2026 Sumary of Activities through the year including Finance, Membership & Website Reports, Elections to the Committee
  4. Anyone with medical Insurance?
  5. The UK state pension triple lock
  6. The Last Page

Letter from the Chairman –Autumn 2026

A very strange year in terms of the weather we have all been having! A complete split up and down the country, with the east coast of Scotland joining the south of the UK, in having a [mini] heatwave for months, while in the west of Scotland, it was just WET!

Truth be told, I quite enjoyed it, but my good lady found it far too hot! Right now, by comparison, at the end of September, we are right in the teeth of a south-easterly gale!

Moving on – and it has been a very frustrating summer for us on the pensions front! We have continued to pursue the Company relentlessly on as many fronts as possible but largely with Ms Harriet Wu in San Ramon/Houston and Ashley Sanders in London. We have received [polite but] negative replies on all fronts, which just spurs us on to do even more!

Having had a face-to-face meeting with Ms Wu in Canary Wharf back in the late Spring, we have been taking every chance to stress the difficulties in communicating with – or the total lack of communication with – the Professional Corporate Sole Trustee [IGG], while of course also continuing to stress the absolute necessity of a pension supplementation at the earliest possible opportunity.

As many of you will know, the Chevron Irish Pension Plan is undergoing the ‘consultation process’ right now, prior to probable closure. Foremost I must stress that this Plan is completely different to our own. There are no employees involved. There is no active Chevron company left in the Republic of Ireland. We understand that the terms of the closure are along those lines of an annuity, with provisions for a spouses’ pension and also a small annual increase. For your interest, we will report that result of this ‘consultation’ in due course.

Meanwhile all the committee members have been diligently working away on different aspects of the CUKPA administration, including membership and subscription issues. Even after 26 years, we are still fighting to sort this out and make all the subscriptions right, in the right category!

Some of the findings and connotations are incredible! People paying twice, people not paying at all, people paying in the wrong age category, some people making ‘donations’ as well as subscriptions, people moving without telling us – and with Chris Simes and Peter Young trying to sort them out!

A the same time, Andrew Nisbet is trying to set up, simplify [or something desperately technical anyway], concerning our website and our ability to link all the financial aspects of our business together properly – membership, finance and IT – all very much to the benefit of all!

Meanwhile, Alan Dennison continues to pursue stories from us relentlessly [a bit like the pensions!]. He does very well with the Newsletter, trying to find the right balance between factual information, stories and providing us all with a few laughs along the way!

Steve Ladle on the other hand, has been keeping up with the HPPA alliance and the government issues of the day, which would really try the mind of a Saint, if we could find one! Not too many laughs there!

In addition to the computer roles he has, Andrew Nisbet and Steve Wilson have been continuing to renew, revitalise and replenish the website as well. I think you must agree that it is looking much more topical and now can keep us all updated a great deal better than in the past!

Thank you to those of you who attended our AGM at the Carpenters Arms Pub in London in mid-August, either in person or online. It was very good to have you with us and we really do value your support. We often feel we are working in a bubble on our own and it is good therefore to have members join with us to oversee some of the issues.

Sometimes there can be a plethora of good ideas from our AGM’s and this time was no exception. We gathered a lot of questions/ideas from this meeting, so much so that an additional online committee meeting has been arranged in November to discuss them. In addition, several of the ideas developed during/from that meeting have already been used in our recent letter to the Company.

I am pleased to say that albeit slowly, the rise in Membership fees is making a difference. Unfortunately it always takes a long time for changes in subscriptions to break through. However our Treasurer Peter Young has advised of a small improvement, so we will just have to continue to promote the £15 change for normal membership and hope more people pick up on it.

Earlier I mentioned that Editor Alan Dennison was looking for people/articles with a different perspective on travels, holidays or simply life at home! For instance, my wife and I enjoyed a fantastic day out earlier this year at Perth Museum. Sounds a boring museum visit, not your cup-of-tea – well, with a real cut-price train fare on offer, it need not cost too much at all – and an unexpectedly amazing day out! Even cheaper on the bus, with a little bit of determination! Not an excessive cost, yet you can learn or enjoy so much! Amazing – and I must write an article about this in due course. So please think about your holidays or different things you may have done recently – and drop us a line for the Newsletter! Future ideas for others!

Another request too, rather urgent – as I mentioned at the AGM, we are looking for a perhaps newly-retired or interested IT person to assist Andrew Nisbet in his endeavours with our IT systems. If you feel you can help or would like to help, then please do send us an email to that effect, we would be delighted to hear from you! A job description is outlined below.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you of the Chevron Pensioners meetings in Aberdeen every three months or so, at the Justice Mill pub in Union Street, held on a Thursday from 1400 hours. The next one is on 12 November and if you are interested in attending and have not attended before, please get in touch with Dave Armstrong [dave.armstrong25@gmail.com] to confirm your intention to attend. There is also the strong possibility of a further ‘ex-Texaco’ Chevron pensioners meeting in Aberdeen through the coming winter season. My thanks to Alan Jones of Stonehaven for keeping up with these particular meetings.

I would commend all the Committee members to you, as they all work away diligently in their own areas between meetings in their own time. All very much appreciated. Thank you also to all our CUKPA members for your continued confidence and support!

A Bucket List Experience – a story from Alan Dennison

Did you hear about the shepherd who drove his sheep through town? He was given a ticket for making a ewe turn…

How does the man in the moon get his hair cut? Eclipse it.

Chevron UK Pensioners Association
Annual General Meeting 2026
Sumary of Activities through the year including Finance, Membership & Website Reports, Elections to the Committee

Anyone with medical Insurance?

Have you bothered to check your renewal cost versus a new provider. If you are like me, not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ at our age with medical insurance you just pay the renewal charge hoping it hadn’t gone up too much.

I had been a member of Saga medical insurance for the last 10 plus years since retiring and recently looked at alternatives. I now have a different provider and saved 20% or around £480pa off my premium for the exact same cover. If you are interested get in touch at alan260760@aol.com and I will provide further details upon request.

The UK state pension triple lock

This is a government mechanism ensuring that the state pension increases annually. Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently announced plans to scrap the automatic triple lock by April 2030 to fund a new National Care Service The full rate of new State Pension is £241.30 a week. Your amount could be different depending on:

  • if you were contracted out before 2016
  • the number of National Insurance qualifying years you have
  • if you paid into the Additional State Pension before 2016

The Last Page

Insight Magazine 54 Spring 2026

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Inside This Issue (clickable list of contents)
  1. Letter from the Chairman – SPRING 2026
  2. Lagos Adventure
  3. Pensions Schemes Act 2026 – Update
  4. Save Money on Fuel and Car Servicing
  5. CUKPA 2025 AGM 8 October 2025 – Minutes
  6. State Pension increase
  7. April 2027: New tax rates for property and savings income
  8. CUKPA Committee Meeting 18 February 2026 – Minutes
  9. Retiree Lunches
  10. Humour Spot
  11. Membership fee increase to £15
  12. The Last Page

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Letter from the Chairman – SPRING 2026

We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch, so we should have known that there would be a price to pay for the lovely summer last year! Here to the west of Aberdeen, firstly we were snowed in for 12 days from Hogmanay – and then it rained for about a month thereafter – and not just a little bit either! Our little stream was up and over the banks with widespread flooding everywhere across the Shire! But the daffodils are still coming up, so that is a definite plus!

We were very pleased to be awarded a pensions supplementation of 3% in December, backdated to 1 November 2025, very welcome indeed. However, from our estimates, we have been left some 12%+ behind all the inflation of last summer and autumn. Not good enough Chevron!

However, inflation in the UK continues around the 3% mark and we have already asked the Company for a further pension increase as soon as possible – the earliest would be after the appropriate Chevron Corporation Board Meeting on global pensions in September or October or even later in 2026. We feel this is necessary to keep abreast of the ‘cost of living’. crisis, that is still a major concern here to everyone.

Back in November, Neil Jones and I met with our new Professional Corporate Sole Trustee (PCST) for a cordial exchange of views, goals and objectives. We met with the principal and one of two team members assigned to the Chevron Trustee position. In response to their stated position of trying to obtain and work with information from as many sources as possible, we agreed to keep them advised on our future developments with the Company. Levels of communication under the new Trustee arrangement do remain an ongoing concern.

The Association has also been maintaining contact with Mr Ashley Sanders of Chevron in Canary Wharf, in London, our latest contact being a Zoom meeting in early March 2026. With the Aberdeen Chevron office now down to only about half a dozen people, some 250 people remain in the Westferry Circus office at Canary Wharf. The Association is doing its best to remain in touch with as many Chevron people as we can across the Company.

I would like to take this opportunity of sincerely thanking all those members who have written and continue to write to their MP on the pre- 1997 issue of discretionary payments, part of our consultation submission for the 2025 Pension Schemes Bill.

We have also raised the question of the Pension Plan surplus possibly being ‘stolen’ by the Company. There have been amendments raised on this Bill in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but to date, there seems little likelihood of bringing about a change to the blinkered view put forward by the ‘Pensions Minister’ and the ‘Secretary of State for Work & Pensions’. A number of MP’s are also bringing forward an amendment with regard to the ability of Trustees to stand up against employers or maintain their obligations to the pensioners in their particular pension plan. The Association has written to the leading pensions authorities and also to the Pensions Regulator on these same subjects, stressing the need for these amendments to be included in the Bill.

Ed: The latest update can be read here

Meanwhile the CUKPA Committee is diligently working away on many different issues of interest to members. These include reviewing and updating the website, streamlining our IT processes, keeping up with our membership with first declining and then slightly-rising numbers, editing and producing our bi-annual newsletter, writing letters to the Company, answering queries from members and a myriad of other routine tasks, all very necessary to keep your Association doing what it says ‘on the tin’.

Incidentally, we need articles for the newsletters, please do not assume that somebody else will write the articles or nobody will. I might even have to write another article myself!

We have had a good year for meeting people and members. Back in the Autumn, I met with some 45 ex-Texaco heritage CUKPA members in Aberdeen and thank you to Alan Jones for organising this. I was able to share the latest pensions developments and answer questions. If you are an ex-Texaco heritage member, please do get in touch with Alan Jones (alanwjones36ATyahoo.co.uk), as he will be able to tell you when and where the next meeting will be. You could come along and join former colleagues for the morning.

(Email addresses have been altered to discourage ‘scraping’ by spam bots. SImply replace AT with the @ symbol. Ed)

At three monthly intervals I am indebted to Dave Armstrong for organising ex- Chevron heritage CUKPA members for meetings at the Justice Mill in Union Street, Aberdeen. Again, come along and meet up with some old friends. In mid-February, we had some 38 people join us for the afternoon. If you are interested, please do get in touch with Dave Armstrong (david.armstrong25ATgmail.com), for future dates. It is a really good and interesting afternoon and ANY Chevron pensioners would be made very welcome.

Three committee members also attended the London annual reunion in October, organised by Rod and Sue Pesch. This is always a most enjoyable networking event.

The date for our AGM is now fixed for 19 August at 11am at the Carpenters Arms, 12 Seymour Place, London, W1H 7NE. The Medical Society venue is unavailable during August. We are hoping that this will also be streamed online from wherever, so if you cannot join us in person, then do try to connect with us online. It will be from 1100 and will conclude before two o’clock.

We are also seeking any members out there who would be willing to help Andrew Nisbet with the computer side of our business. Andrew has a lot to do, with various projects in hand and the website to review and renew. If you have a little time to spare and can help, then please do get in touch on agnisbetATyahoo.co.uk This is definitely the computer side of the business, rather than writing pages for the website. (Primarily editing website pages according to instructions. Easy once you know how! Andrew)

I have left the worst topic until last! Membership Subscriptions! I regret to advise that we have found it necessary to increase our subscriptions to ensure we balance the books. As you will know only too well, the cost of everything has gone up over the last couple of years and our costs are no different. Even with more meetings online, the Committee do still need to convene periodically for strategic planning purposes. We have contained our costs at £15 pa and would ask your help in subscribing this amount for future membership costs.

Finally, thank you for your continuing support, we greatly appreciate it and will always do our best to be worthy of your confidence. Your committee is working extremely hard to ensure we keep our name to the forefront of Chevron’s mind, difficult though this is most of the time, as pensioners seem to be the last people on the Company’s totem pole, when it comes to ensuring their financial wellbeing. But we will keep on trying!

STOP PRESS Although the Government is still quoting 3% inflation for February/March, obviously the situation in the Middle East over the last month or so will have a huge effect on inflation. It will be into March and April, before these numbers make themselves fully known.

Peter Young continues his series of African Adventures

Lagos Adventure

Pensions Schemes Act 2026 – Update

Incase you missed the link above

Save Money on Fuel and Car Servicing

We all feel the pain when costs rise, even more so recently, so how can we find the best value for money? PetrolPrices is handy phone app and desktop site to help you find the cheapest fuel in your area.

Click Images for larger view

Top petrol price apps in the UK include PetrolPrices, CheckFuelPrices, Fuel Saver App, and Fuel Finder UK, all helping drivers find the cheapest fuel quickly and accurately.

CUKPA 2025 AGM 8 October 2025 – Minutes

State Pension increase

From April 2026, the New State Pension increased by 4.8%, benefiting millions of pensioners with above-inflation payments.
This boosts the full New State Pension to £241.30 weekly (£12,547.60 annually).

April 2027: New tax rates for property and savings income

From 6 April 2027, new tax rates will apply to savings income and profits from renting property. The rates are expected to be 2% above the main rates of income tax – so 22%, 42% and 47% in the basic, higher and additional rate tax bands respectively.

CUKPA Committee Meeting 18 February 2026 – Minutes

Retiree Lunches

The London lunch will be held in the Sovereign Room at the RAF Club, Piccadilly, on October 23rd. Contact Rod Pesch 01442 249212 or 07831 397539 or rodpeschATaol.com

Why not organise a lunch for your area or old business unit friends? We will add it to our Events Page and can give advice and tips on organising.. Let us know through the Contacts Page and we will contact you.

Humour Spot

An old man and a 20-year-old are paired together at a golf tournament. They’re playing a long par 5 that dog legs around some tall trees.
As the 20-year-old sets up his tee shot to hit onto the fairway the old man notes “when I was your age we used to hit over the trees – not around to the side.”
So the 20-year-old readjusts and tries to hit over the trees – but can’t clear them and loses his ball. He tries again and loses that one too…
Then the old man says “of course, when I was your age, the trees were only 6 foot tall.”

Membership fee increase to £15

We are having an increasing number of meetings with Chevron in London regarding the Single Professional Corporate Trustee, and with the Pension Bill Campaign team. Face to face meetings are the most effective for these but do incur travel expenses. You can be sure we are very careful with your money!

If you are over 80 you can reduce your subs to £5 but please try to pay a higher amount. When the payment reference is requested for your standing order, please use the following:- Your surname and initials You can use up to 18 characters for your reference. Please abbreviate long surnames as best you can but initials are very helpful to match the payment to your record.

You will require our bank details which are: Chevron UK Pensioners Association Sort Code: 20-17-92 (Barclays Bank) Account: 10181994

Many thanks for your support – Alan Higgins Chairman

The Last Page

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*What are diluted earnings? It’s a conservative (ie pessimistic) calculation used with complex capital (financing) structures and assumes that all un-issued shares, warrants, preferred shares and debt that can be converted to shares, etc., have been issued.

The next Insight Magazine will be published in the Autumn 2026

Insight Magazine 53 Autumn 2025

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Inside This Issue (click the link)
  1. Letter from the Chairman – Autumn 2025
  2. Congo Adventure
  3. Steve Ladle – Our latest “acquisition”
  4. What a Load of Rubbish!!!
  5. CUKPA Committee Meeting
  6. The Pensions Schemes Bill 2025
  7. The Last Page

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Letter from the Chairman – Autumn 2025

We had a really hot summer in Aberdeen, with temperatures verging on 30 deg C – incredible! Even more so, when the western half of Scotland was having the wettest season for quite a while, but it was a good summer for us, with only April spoiling months of continuous hot weather!

The pace of pension issues has been pretty hot this year too! No sooner had we had a meeting with Mr Simon Owens, the Chairman of the Pension Plan Trustees and found several areas of common ground, than the Company announced the disbandment of the Trustee Board, in favour of a Professional Corporate Sole Trustee.

As I write this letter at the start of October (can you believe that! October already!), news has leaked out that the Company have now signed a contract with a firm called IGG (International Governance Group) in London, with three people nominated as a team to look after Chevron’s UK ‘Professional Corporate Sole Trustee’ business.

Neil Jones, our Vice Chairman, recently met with Ms Harriet Wu (General Manager, Total Rewards) on her June visit to London. Although Neil pressed her on the supplementation issue, much of the meeting was taken up with the PSCT appointment, as everyone is trying to understand this development.

While we accept that the Company is legally entitled to bring in this change, we are very concerned about our future pensions representations to the Company and also deeply regret and disagree the loss of the three MND trustee directors.

The very latest news is that we understand from 1 October, two Trustee Directors including the former Chairman, have been retained, to work alongside IGG for the immediate future. The other two Trustee Directors have resigned. Almost the end of an era indeed.

As always, CUKPA has been continuing to pressure the Company on a pension supplementation as soon as possible, given that we consider Chevron Pensioners to be now some 12-16% behind where they should be.

We have been pushing Ms Harriet Wu on this issue in several letters written to San Ramon, we have also been pushing Ashley Sanders in London (Pensions Manager UK) too, during our regular MSTeams calls every few months.

We had a very good Committee meeting in London in July in a new location – the Grand Union Studios in Ladbroke Grove. Sounds very grand, but it was a functional meeting room at a reasonable price, so it was fine. Very hot, until we got to grips with the air conditioning system!

As always in our committee meetings, we covered a lot of ground, including the latest news on the Professional Corporate Sole Trustee situation. At that point, the Trustees remained in place, but as I mentioned earlier, from I October 2025, IGG are in place, with two remaining Trustees for the time being.

We have also recently discussed CUKPA’s own financial situation and whether subscriptions require to be increased for the coming year. After some significant discussion, it was decided to ask all members currently paying £10 per year, to increase this to £15 per year from January 2026.

As always, our expenses are largely to bring the Committee together once a year in London, to review our longer-term issues and strategy to bring the ‘fight’ to Chevron’s door in any way we can – and also for the majority of the Committee to attend the AGM!

One further issue this summer has been the “Living Standards Survey” sent out both online and in paper copies to all our members. I would sincerely like to thank everyone who responded to this survey, the response levels have been truly amazing, way more than we would have expected from the Association membership alone!

The final number of paper surveys received was 722 and the final number of online responses was 462, making the total number of responses 1184!

The analysis of these results is expected to be made available later in October and we hope this data will help with our lobbying efforts for future pensions increases.

You may also remember that we have been sorting out the number of members we actually have and are making good progress on this, in spite of our membership sadly but steadily dwindling. However, it is also good to know that we still have new members joining the Association too – a very warm welcome to 38 new members this year so far! Fantastic!

Our committee is functioning well too, with several committee members taking on new roles since the last AGM.

As mentioned in my previous letter, we have also gained a new committee member, who volunteered after the last AGM and who was confirmed as a Committee Member at this year’s AGM – and who is already in it up to his proverbial neck!

Steve Ladle is a heritage Texaco pensioner and since joining the committee, has taken on drafting letters for members to send to their MP’s, concerning the latest pensions legislation going through Parliament at the present time.

Another letter to send to your MP will shortly appear on the website. We really would be pleased if you can find the time and effort to send this one to your MP as well – this is an important issue right now and we really would welcome your support! (this was emailed to members earlier).

Thus far, a number of MP’s have responded encouragingly and have already given this initiative their full support!

The Association has also rejoined the “HPPA and Pre-1997 Alliance”. We were members of this group for many years past but left some time ago, as we felt our paths had diverged. With this latest pension legislation, the Committee feel it would be to our definite advantage to rejoin, which we have now done!

Since the last Committee meeting in July, I have met collectively with a group of Chevron pensioners in Aberdeen and then two more Chevron pensioners separately. On both these occasions, I updated the groups with the latest pensions information and activities.

Looking ahead, I have a meeting with a large group of heritage-Texaco pensioners at the Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen on 4 November, then on 19 November, I have another meeting with the group of Chevron pensioners at the Justice Mill in Union Street, Aberdeen.

At both these meetings, I will endeavour to relate the latest pensions situation to them. In the meantime, after the event by the time you read this but as advertised in the last Newsletter and also online, we will have had the 2025 CUKPA AGM at the ‘Medical Society of London’ on 8 October.

This year we had a really good attendance, both in the room and online, with good questions being asked, some discussion held and responses given where we could.

On that occasion I put out a plea for any members who might like to come along and join the committee. Just get in touch and we will arrange for you to attend as an Observer for your first meeting and simply see if this is for you – you might even enjoy it! If not, then hey, no harm done!

By way of something different for as many people who might be interested, we are hoping that Andrew Nisbet, our IT wizard, will manage to run another ‘Virtual Coffee Morning’ later in the year. Please watch the website for details of this and how to join in, if you would like to. Join in and participate, join in and simply listen – no obligation either way! Indeed, you might be able to introduce a new subject or ask a question on another – who knows!

In conclusion, I (always) look forward to meeting a few more members at the AGM in London – that always gives me so much pleasure, usually after such a very long time!

Thank you once again for giving us your trust and confidence in trying to achieve and improve on the next Pensions Supplementation – we take that trust extremely seriously and everyone on the committee does their very best to honour that trust, in the best way they possibly can.

Alan Higgins, Chairman

Congo Adventure

A story from his company travels in Africa by Peter Young

Steve Ladle – Our latest “acquisition”

After graduating from Imperial with a Maths degree in 1973, I joined an Insurance company (Guardian Royal Exchange) in a new team set up to assess workplace risk at large industrial concerns and to produce risk improvement reports for their directors and senior management recognising new requirements introduced by the Health & Safety at Work Act (1974).

After 6 years I decided it was time for change, so I retrained as a computer programmer and joined Texaco in their IT department in Knightsbridge and then Canary Wharf.

This was a time of rapid change as IT moved from programs written on punch cards, data entry staff and systems running overnight to online real time systems and PCs/local area networks replacing dumb terminals connected to enormous mainframes.

In 1993, I moved out of IT to work for a department being set up to compete in the newly emerging competitive gas shipping and supply market. My specialism was in understanding and influencing the industry changes, that were constantly being developed, to ensure that the new market(s) operated both competitively but also safely in delivering gas from the North Sea etc. to the final customers.

Having developed some reasonably niche skills, I left Texaco in 1998. I initially ran my own consultancy but then joined Total Energy followed later by a small specialist Energy Consultancy to further advise on the constant changes in the Governance aspects of the industry in the GB, Ireland and European energy markets.

I chaired a number of industry groups as well as working with government departments and regulators. From 2008, I also worked for a number of small charities and in 2018 decided to fully retire from the Energy industry.

Personal
I was married for 40 years but sadly my wife died in 2021. However, I have 2 “boys”, one living in Canada and the other in London.

As a Scout Trustee, I also look after a number of Scout Halls and am the Treasurer of a Scout Group all of which helps to keep me busy.

I also try hard to look after our garden which was my wife’s pride and joy. However, I am not a “natural” and, other than my greenhouse, I am finding it more of a battle every year.

In terms of my role for the Association, as you may have noticed, I have been active to try and persuade the Government, as part of a group called the HPPA and Pre-97 Pensions Alliance, to improve our pensions.

Our current focus is to persuade them to change the Pensions Act 1995 to make pensionable service before 1997 treated in the same way as service after 1997, by removing the current employer discretionary provisions.

As part of this, you may continue to get requests to send letters to your MP which I hope you can help with as there are relatively few other ways to attract the Government’s attention.

Steve Ladle

What a Load of Rubbish!!!

A story of complex logistics in the Western Isles by Alan Higgins

CUKPA Committee Meeting

CUKPA COMMITTEE MEETING TUESDAY 15 JULY 2025 Grand Union Studios, Ladbroke Grove, London W10 5AD

The Pensions Schemes Bill 2025

The overall aims of this Bill are to reform the UK pensions system by fostering larger, more efficient pension funds, improving opportunities for increased investment returns and improving retirement outcomes for savers.

For Defined Contribution (DC) Schemes which are becoming more common, it is proposing options such as:

– Small Pot Consolidation where there is an automatic transfer of deferred small pension pots to larger, more effective funds to increase their value

– intervention by the Pensions Regulator if a scheme is not delivering value for members

– Guided Retirement whereby trustees are required to implement guided retirement options for members approaching retirement.

For Defined Benefit (DB) Schemes, such as ours, the main area relates to proposals to enable Surplus Extraction which will partially relax the rules to allow well-funded schemes to release any surplus back to the employer.

Pension Associations are expressing widespread concern over these proposals as they envisage Trustees handing back large amounts of surplus when members of the scheme believe that surplus should be used to improve member benefits, particularly with respect to the parts of a pension that relate to pre-1997 service where currently increases to this element are made only at the discretion of the employer.

Other initiatives in the Bill include:

  • Creating a framework for the regulation of DB superfunds as an alternative to insurance company buy-outs (an insurance company running the scheme to take over a defined benefit pension scheme’s liabilities, usually in exchange for a single payment from the pension scheme, and enabling the original company scheme to wind up).
  • Amendments to compensation schemes to allow earlier payment to members with terminal illnesses and
  • Changes to Payment Protection Fund levy restrictions
  • The rollout of pensions dashboards to make it easier for individuals to view their pension information.

For full details I would suggest the Explanatory Notes produced for the Bill (PDF) could be a good starting point

What’s Next?

The Bill was introduced to Parliament on 5 June 2025 and its second reading took place on 7 July 2025. At the time of writing it was in its Committee stage and would be coming back to the House of Commons and the House of Lords in October.

The target for the legislation is to be passed and receive Royal Assent in 2026, though the exact dates for the different measures to come into effect will vary.

Both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Pensions Regulator will need to draft guidelines re specific elements of the Bill.

Finally, you may again be receiving requests to write to your MP if new proposals that are currently being talked about are seen as feasible and realistic to give us all more protection for our important pensions.

The Last Page

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*What are diluted earnings? It’s a conservative (ie pessimistic) calculation used with complex capital (financing) structures and assumes that all un-issued shares, warrants, preferred shares and debt that can be converted to shares, etc., have been issued.

The next Insight Magazine will be published in the Spring 2026