tPR publishes Virgin Media remediation guidance

The Regulator has today published guidance for trustees and managers on the proposed remediation of historic section 37 problems exposed by the Virgin Media decision. The guidance proceeds on the basis that, if the Pension Schemes Bill 2025 is enacted in its current form, many historic alterations to salary-related contracted-out schemes made between 6 April 1997 and 5 April 2016 may yet be validated, even where no written actuarial confirmation can now be found, provided the alteration is “potentially remediable” under the Bill. Trustees are told to decide now whether their scheme is affected, take legal and actuarial advice, and, if they intend to use the statutory route, begin the preparatory work without waiting for Royal Assent. tPR also says that written instructions can be given to the actuary now, that exhaustive record searches are not expected at the outset, and that remediation action does not need to be reported to tPR.

The guidance can be found here.