Workers who lost pensions call for surplus to be used
Pensioners from a plant in Cardiff who lost their pensions when it went bust more than 20 years ago have called for surplus money to be used to compensate them.
Workers from Allied Steel and Wire got 90% of their pensions back, but that has been eroded because payments are not linked to rising prices.
One of them, John Benson, said "retirement dreams" had been "destroyed" but that using a small portion of a £13bn surplus in the Pension Protection Fund would be enough to fully restore the pensions.
The UK government said it was considering the matter but warned "these are complex matters requiring a balanced approach".
Minister to 're-consider' steel pensioners' plight
Steelworkers say pension loss like Horizon scandal
Pension protections were strengthened after the Maxwell Scandal, when newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell stole more than £400m from the pension funds of his Mirror newspaper group to prop up his ailing businesses.
His pensioners lost half of what they had paid in.
As a result of his action, the Financial Assistance Scheme was set up as a safety net to protect pensioners when the companies they worked for went bust.
It was this scheme that helped bail out a group of Welsh workers from Allied Steel and Wire (ASW) in Cardiff who lost out when the company went under in 2002.
Although the ASW workers got 90% of their pensions, their value has fallen since that time as they are not linked to rising prices.
Mr Benson, from Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, has led a long campaign asking the government to make up the shortfall, which he said has had dire consequences.
"It's destroyed retirement dreams. Some colleagues have had to downsize," he said.
"One lady who was seriously ill herself couldn't afford a funeral after her husband died, and a couple of months later she died herself.
"It's soul destroying. It's destroyed me.
"There are some horror stories, too many to tell."
Now a cross-party group of Senedd members has written to the prime minister urging him to pay the pensions in full, among them the former Conservative leader in Cardiff Bay Andrew RT Davies.
"This is a massive injustice that's been inflicted on ASW pension holders and other pension holders across the UK," he said.
"Through no fault of their own, they've lost their entitlement to a full pension which they paid into, and we believe the system should be corrected and that's why we've signed this letter."
It has been revealed that the scheme which replaced the Financial Assistance Scheme, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), has a surplus of £13bn.
Mr Benson said paying a tiny amount of that money to him and his fellow pensioners to make up the shortfall would not be a hardship, but would make all the difference to them.
"This money, this surplus in the PPF, should be paid to restore our pensions in full.
"They've got a £13bn surplus in the PPF – use it!
"Stop making excuses that it's public money – it's our money. This money is meant for us, not other government policies."
The matter was also raised with Pensions Minister and Swansea West MP Torsten Bell at a meeting of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee earlier this month.
Committee chair Labour MP Debbie Abrahams asked: "I cannot understand the reason for not making a decision to enable them to spend the last few years of their life in some comfort, can you give us any hope around this?"
Bell replied: "It does need to be looked at properly.
"It needs to be considered in the round of those wider impacts, as all public policy matters are, but I am absolutely aware of the issues.
"I am also aware of the average age of the people that are affected.
"The best thing I can do is to say that I am aware and I am looking at it, but the public finance implications are more complicated than you set out."
In response, concerning its £13bn surplus, the PPF said it deliberately had what it called a reserve to protect it from future claims or in case people live longer than expected.
The Department for Work and Pensions said it recognised members' incomes may have been eroded in recent years.
"However, these are complex matters requiring a balanced approach," it said.
"The government is continuing to consider what we have heard from the Pension Protection Fund and Financial Assistance Scheme members on this issue."
More on this story on BBC Politics Wales at 10:00 BST on Sunday 22 June
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Sequa Petroleum N.V. Update
LONDON, June 23, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News: (BOURSE:MLSEQ) Further to its announcement of 19 May 2025, Sequa Petroleum N.V. (the "Company") has continued to monitor the situation and has not received any indication that progress towards completion of the Transaction will restart. Despite extensive efforts the Company has not been able to raise new equity capital, and without completion of the Transaction the Company will not be able to maintain a going concern nor pursue its business development strategy. Accordingly, the Company has started to reduce its remaining financial liabilities as required to pursue closure of the Company in compliance with statutory provisions for dissolution of the Company and its subsidiaries, and in a solvent manner. The Company is preparing for an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held in the near term to resolve on the dissolution process. View source version on Contacts info@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The ultimate middle class ‘toy' that could slash the value of your home
Did you install a swimming pool then come to regret it? Let us know at money@ During the cloudless skies of the first lockdown, some turned their houses and gardens into top-notch private leisure centres. Former prime minister Rishi Sunak built a 12m swimming pool at his home in Yorkshire. His predecessor Boris Johnson followed suit in 2023, gaining permission for an outdoor pool at his house in south Oxfordshire – despite planning wobbles over the presence of a newt colony nearby. As the weather turns scorching, you may be tempted to do the same thing in your own garden, even if it's in the city. But should you? Swimming pools in the gardens of large country houses are often referred to by estate agents as among the top 'toys' that make up the ideal family home, along with tennis courts, home gyms and party barns. The appetite for outdoor pools in the UK tends to wax and wane. After the financial crash of 2007, demand softened as many were put off by the annual running costs. However, the increased efficiency of air-source heat pumps has significantly reduced these, and many modern pool designs tend to avoid having a deep end, resulting in less water to heat in the first place. You'll find pools in luxurious homes across the stockbroker belt and into the Cotswolds and beyond, but they are more unusual in city gardens. Analysis from Yopa, an online estate agency, found that properties with pools account for less than 5pc of all the properties on the market. And, it added, just one in five are selling. Houses with pools cost significantly more than those without: the average asking price for a property with a swimming pool in April was £490,498 compared with the wider average asking price of £267,500. In London, the average price of a property with a pool, according to Yopa's research, was £961,000. A swimming pool in the back garden will rarely add value to a property; it might do the opposite, even for those in the countryside, warns Verona Frankish, of Yopa. 'A swimming pool can seem like the ultimate property feature, particularly when we do get a spell of warm weather, but it's probably not as appealing as you think when it comes to buyer appetites for such properties.' Marc Schneiderman of Arlington Residential, an estate agency based in St John's Wood, north-west London, thinks differently. 'It's absolutely worth putting in a pool even if the garden is very small,' he says. 'Outdoor pools are pretty rare, certainly in more central London locations. On average, only 5pc of houses we have handled in the past few years have an outdoor swimming pool. With the weather in the summer months seeming to get hotter each year, those properties with pools are super desirable to certain buyers and give the house a unique selling feature, even if it is at the expense of the overall garden space.' Estate agency The Modern House recently sold two ordinary-looking terraced houses in London with surprise swimming pools in the back garden. One was in Forest Gate, in a slowly gentrifying corner of east London on the Elizabeth Line. The house had an asking price of £1.2m, considerably higher than the average £540,462 price of a terraced house in the area, according to property portal Rightmove. The other, near Wood Green in north London, was on the market for £1.6m; houses in the area sell on average for £649,466. It featured palm trees in the garden which provoked an Instagram user to coin it 'Costa del Haringey'. There is no formal record of the number of private outdoor swimming pools in London gardens. However, Rob Grant, for a newsletter on Substack, estimated that there are 3,200 private outdoor swimming pools in London. He did this using data from the Greater London Authority. Outer London boroughs, such as Richmond-upon-Thames, Bromley and Havering, had the highest concentration of back garden swimming pools, although there is a cluster in more central locations, including Hampstead and Wandsworth. This tallies with figures from London Swimming Pool Company, an installer: 15pc of all the pools they have built for private clients in London over the past 30 years have been in Wimbledon where gardens are generally more generous in size. Other areas the company has worked in include Primrose Hill and St John's Wood. Savills is currently marketing a seven-bedroom detached property in Parkside, Wimbledon Village, for £13.9m, and a large, seven-bedroom house near Tooting Common with an outdoor pool is also on the market for £3.5m with Savills. Knight Frank, meanwhile, is selling a double-fronted Victorian house in Wandsworth with an indoor pool in the back garden for £3.975m. Most urban homeowners with a large enough rear garden can build an outdoor pool under permitted development rights, providing they don't take up more than 50pc of the total area. It's advisable to check with the council before contracting a digger just in case there are any exclusions in the local area. There are other aspects to consider including where the pool's water will discharge. If the plan is to drain into the public sewer, that might need permission from the local water authority. In April, Water UK, which represents the 16 water and sewage companies in England and Wales, proposed charging some households, such as those with swimming pools or big gardens, more for the water they use. Compass Pools by Waterstream is the biggest installer of pools in the UK, building around 100 a year. To date, their business is up 40pc on last year, thanks to the long dry spring. Four fifths of its clients opt for outdoor swimming pools and the average price is £130,000, although those made with concrete blocks and a vinyl liner are cheaper to install. Access to allow an excavator to reach the back garden in a city house and carry out the essential digging work is the main factor that will impact the cost of a back garden pool. 'In London, it can get quite expensive because cranes are often required to move the excavator into place when we're working in the garden of a terraced house,' says Alex Kearnsley, from Compass Pools. 'You're almost certainly looking at a starting price of six figures.' Compass-designed pools for back gardens are typically made from ceramic composite similar to that used in yacht building and are built off-site. This ensures that installation is far quicker than a conventional concrete pool. Once the excavation work has been completed, the structure is then craned into the garden in one day along with all the equipment for the plant 'room' (in reality a small, half-height shed). The challenge is delivering a pool down narrow and congested London streets using a specially adapted articulated lorry. This will involve suspending on-street parking for the day – a process that Kearnsley describes as 'good fun'. Typical town or city pools will be either in the form of a swim lane used for exercise, measuring about 12m long and 2.5m wide and positioned down one length of the garden. Families tend to go for a plunge pool of 8m by 4m, although they can be as small as 4m x 2m if space is limited. There needs to be a minimum decking space of 1.2m around the pool to allow for access and emergency exits, which are normally paved, and space for the equipment such as pumps and filters. As 90pc of outdoor swimming pools are heated by air-source heat pumps, space needs to be allocated for these too. Where space is a concern, some owners opt to install a hard cover over the pool so that it can be used as a patio off-season. Compass offers this service, which costs approximately £20,000 to install. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Surge in firms using loans to pay tax bills amid April increases
The number of businesses using loans in order to pay for tax bills has soared by more than a third so far this year in the face of April cost increases, a major financing firm has warned. Billions of pounds of tax and VAT payments are set to be covered by credit and financing arrangements this year, according to specialist lender Premium Credit. Bosses at the finance provider said it comes as small businesses across the UK face increased 'strain' on their finances due to the recent increase in employers' national insurance contributions. In April, firms were hit by higher NI payments alongside the increases in the national minimum wage and tax increases, such as higher business rates payments and new packaging taxes. Premium Credit said it witnessed a 37% jump in customers using its tax and VAT financing service in the first quarter of 2025 against the same period last year as firms prepared for tax hikes. The number of customers using financing for tax and VAT has jumped by 109% over the past two years, the company added. It added that the average loan used to help pay VAT tax bills was worth around £108,000 in 2024, with this around £70,000 for non-VAT bills. Jennie Hill, chief commercial officer at Premium Credit, said: 'Around £3 billion to £5 billion of tax and VAT liabilities are financed each year and recent increases to employers' national insurance are adding to the strain on SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) cashflow.' Meanwhile, research commissioned by the business surveying small business owners found that 20% of small firms said they worry that paying tax bills will be more difficult this year. Around 28% also cautioned that they think they will struggle to pay a tax bill in the next five years. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
