Revaluation meaning

Statutory minimum increase rates The summary below sets out the current statutory minimum uplift that occupational pension schemes must apply each year to each tranche of pension. Period of pensionable service to which the pension relates (or, for money purchase benefits, the period in which contributions were paid): Before 6 April 1997 — no statutory minimum increase. However, to refund surplus assets to a sponsoring employer under the Social Security Pensions Act 1975, s 58A, it was necessary (until 5 April 2006) to revalue all pensions in payment (excluding GMPs and money purchase benefits) annually in line with RPI, capped at 5%. Despite the absence of a statutory minimum, most defined benefit schemes provide some pre-1997 indexation under scheme rules or as a discretionary benefit. As at March 2023, research indicates that only 17% of members of private sector defined benefit schemes receive no pre-1997 indexation on benefits. There have been calls on the government to legislate to mandate inflation-linked increases to pensions...

In this issue: Key developments and horizon scanning Transferring property Leasing property Property management Residential property Environment, energy and buildings Easements, rights and covenants Property development Property taxes Property in Wales Property in Scotland LexTalk®Property: a Lexis®Nexis community Additional property updates this week Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Trackers New Q&As Key developments and horizon scanning BPF and Law Commission comment on draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill The British Property Federation (BPF) has issued its views on the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, warning that proposed caps on ground rents could undermine investments held by pension funds and institutional investors. It said investors who acted in good faith to meet pension liabilities should be compensated, and noted that government announcements do not address this point. While it supports parts of the commonhold package, including adjustments to funding for major works,...

Automatic enrolment Introduction of Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Regulations 2025 On 1 January 2026, Ireland’s Automatic Enrolment (AE) retirement savings system, branded MyFutureFund, commenced. The National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA) is tasked with administering the system. AE runs in parallel with current occupational pension schemes and does not replace them. Whether a worker must be enrolled depends on whether their employment counts as ‘exempt employment’. The Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Regulations 2025 (Ireland) (AE Regulations), SI No 637/2025, were signed by the Minister for Social Protection in December 2025 and came into force on 1 January 2026. Under the AE Regulations, an employee is in ‘exempt employment’ only where their occupational pension arrangement satisfies new minimum criteria: For defined contribution arrangements, the employer must pay at least 1.5% of gross pay (subject to an annual cap of €1,200); and combined employer and employee contributions must total no less than 3.5% of gross pay (subject to an annual cap of €2,800)....

What is the background to this legal action being taken? In Texas, ExxonMobil faced a lawsuit from shareholders claiming that the decline in its share price between 31 March 2014 and 30 January 2017 stemmed from material misstatements or omissions by the company and its directors, including former CEO (and former US Secretary of State) Rex Tillerson. The case centred on ExxonMobil’s assertions that none of its assets were, or would become, stranded due to climate change risks, and in particular on its refusal to write down assets rendered unprofitable by the sharp fall in oil prices that began in mid‑2014. While other oil and gas peers recorded more than $200bn of impairments, ExxonMobil told investors that its superior processes meant no revaluation was required. It recognised no impairments until after a $12bn public debt issue in March 2016, following which its credit rating slipped from AAA to AA+. In October 2016 and January 2017, the company disclosed write-downs exceeding 20% of its proved reserves, defined as the volume...

The general principles In an ideal scenario, the wording and provisions of contracts, deeds and other documents would be free of ambiguity, preventing misunderstanding when construing them; yet, in reality, and in practice, that is not invariably so. Consequently, the courts have fashioned methods or principles for construction and interpretation, including the interpretation of scheme deeds and rules in the pensions context. The principles governing the construction of documents are now well settled and uncontroversial. The courts’ objective is to construe documents by ‘common sense’ standards; they ultimately consider the ordinary and natural meaning of the language employed. These principles have been refined, built upon and expanded through a number of significant House of Lords and Supreme Court decisions. Judicial reasoning has built upon these foundations...

FORTHCOMING CHANGE 1 : Section 10 of the Finance Act 2022 will raise the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028, except for members of the firefighters, police and armed forces public service pension schemes. This increase applies broadly across registered schemes, subject to the stated exemptions. The same Act will also permit members of registered pension schemes to access benefits before 57 where, on or before 4 November 2021, they either held an ‘unqualified right’ to draw benefits, or were already engaged in a substantive transfer to a scheme providing an unqualified right to a protected pension age below 57 on or before 4 November 2021. To rely on this new protection applying in 2028, the scheme’s rules must, as at 11 February 2021, have contained an unqualified right to take entitlement to scheme benefits before age 57. For more detail, see Practice Note: Increasing the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) to 57—pensions impact. FORTHCOMING CHANGE 2 : The Pension...

ARCHIVED This tracker is archived and is not being updated. It gathers significant pensions judgments from 2022, arranged by topic. The entries are organised by subject, with the topics listed in the Table of Contents on the left-hand side. Construction of scheme rules-revaluation De La Rue plc v De La Rue Pension Trustee Ltd Case information Full name: (1) De La Rue Plc (2) De La Rue Holdings Ltd (3) De La Rue International Ltd v (1) De La Rue Pension Trustee Ltd (2) Mark Crickett Citation: [2022] EWHC 48 (Ch), [2022] All ER (D) 50 (Jan) Court: High Court Judgment date: 14 January 2022 (hearing dates 15–16 December 2021) Representation: Keith Rowley QC and Elizabeth Ovey (instructed by Hogan Lovells International LLP) for the Claimants Henry Day (instructed by Hogan Lovells International LLP) for the First Defendant Andrew Mold QC (instructed by Osborne Clarke LLP) for the Second Defendant ...