Our Kingfisher PLC collection is now available for you to research and visit.
The Pensions Archive Trust has a new collection ready for viewing at London Metropolitan Archives – the Kingfisher PLC collection. Spanning from 1935-2013, it holds legal documents from the creation and development of Kingfisher pension schemes, publications and explanatory handbooks for pension scheme members, and the in-house Woolworth staff magazine, ‘The New Bond’.
The value of pension rights only seeped into public consciousness towards the end of the last century. The personal finance columns of popular newspapers began to highlight the importance of pension rights as well as the family home.
Pensions tend to loom in the public consciousness if expectations are disappointed, legal or regulatory constraints misunderstood, or because there is not enough money. All featured when females’ State pension age was increased from age 60 to age 65 in stages up to November 2018. Protests, lobbying and a Court challenge were the result. Change had been driven both by the cost of increasing longevity and to comply with equal treatment legislation.
On 1st October 2011, after a transitional period, the Default Retirement Age of 65 was finally abolished. Employers could no longer compel employees to retire at 65 without objective justification, reflecting changes in social and political priorities.
In September 2005, a significant change took place. An employer leaving a final salary group scheme would now have to meet its share of any scheme deficit on a full buy out basis rather than the MFR basis prescribed in earlier legislation.
On this day 25 years ago, 2 July 1997, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown MP, delivered the budget which has been accused of dealing a death blow to defined benefit pension schemes in the UK.
In his budget statement to the House of Commons, Mr Brown stated that “British companies have invested too little and too late in the economic cycle.” To encourage companies to re-invest rather than distribute profits, he proposed a “structural reform to encourage investment”: