Our latest blog post reviews two important developments in the calculation of holiday pay. First, the Government announced late last year that it will extend the reference period for calculating holiday pay. Second, the recent decision in Flowers v East of England Ambulance Trust clarifies the uncertainty surrounding whether voluntary overtime should be included in the calculation of holiday pay. New reference period From 6 April 2020, holiday pay will be calculated on the basis…

Recent determinations of the Pensions Ombudsman¹ have considered the extent to which employers should provide information on pension rights to employees who have notified them of a terminal illness. The law There is no general duty on employers to advise employees about their pension rights, or to safeguard employees’ economic well-being. Indeed, the law prohibits anyone other than a person authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority from advising on pension rights. However, a distinction should…

We recently advised a pension scheme on a buy-out of its defined benefit (DB) liabilities with an insurer. In the run up to the transaction, the employer and the trustees looked very carefully at whether the scheme had enough assets to make the transaction possible. It was touch and go, but in the end the assets were just enough. This made me think about how important taking benefit de-risking action as part of the journey…

Guaranteed minimum pension (GMP) conversion offers the opportunity for defined benefit schemes to simplify their benefits, potentially saving costs and making schemes more attractive to be bought out with an insurer. Age-old question One of the great unanswered questions of pensions law has finally being answered. In October last year, the High Court in the Lloyds Bank case determined that pension schemes have to equalise for the effect of GMPs. As part of the judgment,…

Since July 2017 when the Supreme Court abolished the requirement to pay a fee to issue a claim in the Employment Tribunal, there has been a steady increase in the number of claims issued in the Employment Tribunal, although the numbers are yet to reach the levels we saw before the fees regime was introduced. The most recent figures published by the Ministry of Justice (“MOJ”) for the period for October to December 2018 show…