- Contraventions of pensions legislation or conduct where restoration may be appropriate include:
- where an employer deducts employee contributions from their pay but fails to pay them, or the employer’s own contributions over to the pension scheme
- where it is reasonable for us to impose a contribution notice, eg where an act has detrimentally affected in a material way the likelihood of DB scheme benefits being received
Enforcement approach
- As far as possible, our main aim when pursuing restoration is for members’ pension benefits to be put back to where they would have been had the breach or conduct not occurred.
- For unpaid contributions, as a minimum, we would usually issue a notice to the employer requiring them to pay any contributions that are outstanding (and, where appropriate employee contributions) and allow a reasonable amount of time to do this. If the employer fails to pay the unpaid or missing contributions, we can issue an improvement notice, and we may issue financial penalties in the same way as for remedial breaches.
- For conduct engaging our contribution notice power under s38, we may issue a notice to secure monies for the scheme and, depending on the circumstances, may also use our penalty or criminal powers under sections 58A to 58D of the Pensions Act 2004.