UT-2024-000019 - [2025] UKUT 00257 (TCC)

The Panel provided some useful background to the Scheme in the Determination. This was not challenged before us, and we gratefully adopt their account.

The Scheme was established by a Definitive Trust Deed and Rules in 1998. DFL was from the outset the statutory employer in relation to the Scheme. The Case Team had set out the valuation history of the Scheme in a table as follows:

The repeated message from DFL to the Trustees from May 2009 onwards was that its business was under cashflow pressure, which made supporting the Scheme difficult for DFL to manage. DFL asked the Scheme to help by paying the Pension Protection Fund (“PPF”) levy. Significant sums of PPF levy were paid by the Scheme, in at least some cases on the basis that DFL would in due course reimburse the Scheme. Over the period 2012 to 2017 inclusive the total PPF levy paid by the Scheme amounted to £899,138. The Case Team also drew attention to the fact that the Scheme bore a further £318,470 of expenses that were not reimbursed by DFL.

Annual deficit repair contributions paid by DFL to the Scheme, as set out by the Case Team, were as follows:

In late 2015/early 2016, the most recent triennial valuation had a valuation date of 1 April 2014. This valuation was signed off in July 2015 and included a recovery plan extending to 30 June 2030. The employer contributions required to repair the deficit at the valuation date started at £88,824 in 2015/16 and increased to £617,268 in 2029/30.

Most recently, the recovery plan finalised as part of the triennial valuation dated 1 April 2020 and signed off in July 2021, included a schedule of annual deficit repair contributions for the period June 2021 to April 2046; these started at £199,384 in 2020/2021 and rose to £923,677 by the twentieth year of the plan. These show a significant increase over the previous valuation.