Pension problem

[PuddingandPie1]

I have several friends who through they were entitled to an occupational pension from their brief(ish) spells (2 to 8 years) outside teaching. All of them report serious issues extracting the pension from their former private sector employers.

It seems to be becoming standard practice for these employers to claim to "have no records" from the 1970s and 1980s and to use this as an excuse for not paying pensions to former employees.

If your friends worked for an employer in the 70s or early 80s for less than five years, they're probably not entitled to a pension - back then, they would have had a refund of their contributions. The standard then was that you needed to be aged 26 or over and have been in the pension scheme for at least five years before you became entitled to a pension - and pension schemes quite often had waiting periods before you could join, so it's feasible that your friend could have worked for an employer for eight years without becoming entitled to a pension.

It's fairly likely that their former employers genuinely have no records, simply because they would only keep records of those who were entitled to a pension - do your friends have any paperwork? That would probably help, if they do.

If you think you're just hitting a brick wall, it might be worth getting in touch with TPAS (Pensions Advisory Service, can't do links, but it'll show up if you google it). It's staffed mostly by volunteers, but they can help in asking the right questions, or by knowing which companies were taken over and where the records - if they exist - might be held.

Did they keep records? I have records from employment going back nearly 30 years. People should always keep that kind of thing, not hope an employer will keep it. Although as said above they may have no entitlement anyway because of the long service periods needed. Also if those people did tax returns back then they could look at their own tax files at home and see if their tax return mentioned a pension payment.