Neonatal care leave from April 6, 2025: New regulations 

From April 6, 2025, employees will have the right to take up to 12 weeks’ leave if they have a child who receives neonatal medical care. This will be a ‘day one’ right, i.e. there will be no service requirement for an employee to be entitled to it. Whether the leave is paid depends on certain eligibility criteria.

Regulations have now been made covering certain aspects of this new right, including allowing employers to reclaim payments of statutory pay from HMRC and imposing obligations in connection with such payments.

The regulations setting out requirements for pension provision during this new type of leave have not yet been approved by Parliament (the draft provisions broadly align with other family leave). We are also awaiting guidance, which has been promised before April 6. Schemes should consider whether any rule amendments are needed once regulations are finalised, or whether their rules are sufficiently flexible to cover this new form of leave.

Read the regulations setting out employers’ rights and obligations on making payments and the regulations making consequential amendments to other legislation.

Read the draft regulations setting out pensions provisions (awaiting final Parliamentary approval).

GAD blog post on transforming pension schemes for the digital age 

The Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) has published a blog post discussing the opportunities and risks presented by data management in pension schemes.

The blog post highlights the importance of a well-thought-out data strategy. It suggests the first step is to set clear, achievable and aspirational goals. These goals could be tied to ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, enhancing member experience and/or optimising operational efficiency. Common pitfalls in data strategies include lack of clarity, data silos and poor data quality. Strategies should be continually revisited through engagement with administrators, conducting regular audits and adapting to new technologies.

GAD echoes messaging from the Pensions Regulator highlighting the importance of data quality, and sets out steps to improve this. It also notes the need to adapt processes to handle the requirements of pensions dashboards.

Read the blog post.

Employment Tribunal finds discriminatory retirement policy was not justified: Scott v Walker Morris LLP

The Employment Tribunal has found that a law firm’s retirement policy, which set out a default retirement age with the ability to apply for later retirement in certain circumstances, was discriminatory on grounds of age: Scott v Walker Morris LLP.

The policy mandated that partners retire at age 60 but allowed them to apply to delay their retirement to age 63, and then again to age 65. To be successful in their application, the partner (among other things) needed to demonstrate that their contribution to the Partnership had been and would continue to be ‘of an exceptional nature’. The claimant brought a case against the Partnership when his application to delay retirement was refused. The policy was clearly directly age discriminatory, but the Partnership argued that it was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, which is a defence to direct age discrimination.

The Tribunal did not agree. It found that the Partnership did have legitimate aims: (a) workforce and succession planning; and (b) maintaining a collegiate and cohesive atmosphere. However, it found that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that this policy was a proportionate means of achieving those aims. There was no evidence that in practice the retirement policy helped to address those concerns: for example, there was no evidence of difficulty recruiting, promoting or retaining junior employees because of the lack of opportunity to progress. The Tribunal found that the Partnership had not considered less discriminatory ways of addressing these aims, and had been focused on finding a position that would create consensus among the Partnership.

While the case is obviously of interest to anyone maintaining a default or compulsory retirement age, it also demonstrates a wider point when considering any form of discrimination: it is not enough to simply recite justifications that actions are a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim; there needs to be evidence that this is in fact the case in practice. Reasoning and evidence should be carefully considered and recorded.

Read the case.

Pensions Academy Online, March 11 and 13, 2025: Register now

Our next Pensions Academy Online webinars will take place on Tuesday, March 11 and Thursday, March 13, 2025. Each webinar begins at 9:30am and will last approximately one hour. Click here to register for either or both of our Pensions Academy webinars:

• Cyber risks and mitigations in the pensions world – Tuesday, March 11: members of our specialist cyber team will share insights on mitigating the risks (and, in the worst-case scenario, dealing with the aftermath) of cyber breaches. How can pension scheme trustees be better equipped to deal with this pervasive and ever-evolving threat?
• Legal update – Thursday, March 13: we’ll round up all the latest developments and outline what’s on the pensions horizon.