Winding up report

Additional information

Please give details of any additional information that you think is relevant. In particular, please provide full details of any issues that are delaying the completion of wind up.

Unavoidable delays

As a general rule, we would not consider any of the issues outlined in this guidance as acceptable reasons for delays in the wind up process.

However, we do acknowledge that, in some cases, there may be issues which do cause unavoidable delays, for example:

• scheme specific legal issues, which involve court actions;
• industry wide legal issues, which involve court actions underway;
• when early wind up is not in the members' best interests, for example because of early redemption charges on a particular investment policy;
• when further distributions of funds on employer insolvency are expected (although we will expect trustees to have progressed the other preceding aspects of the wind up prior to the final allocation of monies to members in this circumstance); and
• when there is an outstanding member complaint in respect of a particular scheme with the Pensions Ombudsman.

Where parties come up against such obstacles they should contact the regulator through the usual reporting requirements for schemes in wind up (s72A of the Pensions Act 1995), providing an explanation of the issue.

We will be proportionate when considering the merits of each case before deciding on the most appropriate course of action. Although reporting under s72A is a trustee duty, we recognise that it's often delegated to a third party.

Where these obstacles relate to a scheme qualifying for FAS, the trustees should contact the FAS operational unit where they are of the view that such obstacles will prevent them from meeting FAS requirements for providing member data and/or scheme records.