Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Pragmatic approval of multi‑step surplus release: High Court blesses variation of buy‑in and augmentation on winding‑up in KO UK Pension Trustees v Barker

Published on: 21 October 2025

Published by a LexisNexis Pensions expert

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Article summary

KO UK Pension Trustees Ltd v Barker [2024] EWHC 3661 (Ch) What are the practical implications of this case?

KO Trustees shows the court is prepared to endorse pragmatic measures to address the challenging circumstances trustees frequently encounter, and that judicial scrutiny centres on the calibre of trustees’ decisions, assessed against markers of reasonableness, rationality and good faith, rather than on prescribing outcomes. The focus of the inquiry is the integrity of the process and the soundness of the judgment exercised. Building on the Arcadia ruling ([2025] EWHC 11 (Ch)) from earlier this year—another blessing application exploring innovative routes to surplus distribution—KO Trustees underlines that staged strategies can be crafted to unlock surplus where it is confined or otherwise outside trustees’ control, including multi-step pathways to reach amounts that are trapped or inaccessible. Against industry estimates that about £45bn of surplus resides in FTSE 350 pension schemes, these rulings, although dependent on their facts, provide trustees with a clear sense of the range of potential surplus-release methods and the court’s likely stance on them within blessing applications, offering practical confidence to develop and seek approval for workable solutions...

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