United Kingdom: Virgin Media Fix Comes Into Law

In brief

The Pension Schemes Act 2026 ("Act") came into force on 29 April 2026. This means that pension schemes can now benefit from the so-called “Virgin Media fix”. The Virgin Media court case found that certain pension plan amendments that were not accompanied by the legally-required confirmation from the plan’s actuary were not effective. The new statutory provisions address this and broadly allow an actuary to confirm now that specific historic rule amendments would have met the minimum contracting-out standard in place at that time. This enables trustees to treat the relevant amendments as having been validly made and to avoid any possible increase in plan liabilties that would be associated with a void historic rule amendment. Trustees and employers should now work promptly with their advisers to identify relevant amendments that may require an actuarial confirmation under the Act.

The Act also introduced other important changes, relevant to both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) arrangements, including in areas such as surplus extraction, DC “scale” requirements and DC “guided retirement” requirements.

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