Pensions for New Employees - (Clauses 1.8.4)

2.46  Until 23 March 2011, as reflected in Clause 1.8.8 paragraph 10 of the Code of Practice requires that New Employees be offered one of three options as regards pensions. These are:

•  LGPS (for which the Contractor will have to have admission body status);

•  membership of a good quality employer pension scheme of the Contractor either being a contracted out, final salary based defined benefit scheme, or a defined contribution scheme. For defined contribution schemes the Contractor must match employee contributions of up to 6%; or

•  a stakeholder scheme under which the Contractor must match employee contributions of up to at least 6%.

As explained above in paragraphs [1.4 and 1.5] these requirements were revoked from 23 March 2011 and we await further details as to whether an alternative such as the Principles of Good Employment Practice (as relevant to Central Government contracts) will be introduced. It is open to the contracting parties to new contracts to negotiate terms (if any) regulating the requirements for New Employees. Auto-enrolment will become effective from October 2012 which will give some form of protection but until that time the statutory minimum is to offer membership of a stakeholder scheme (but note that legislation governing such schemes does not require the Contractor to make any contributions on behalf of the New Employee and hence an Authority might look to negotiate an obligation for the Contractor to make contributions to the stakeholder scheme of the New Employee).

2.47  Clause 1.8.5 requires the Contractor to comply with any reasonable request from the Authority for information required to monitor the Contractor's compliance with the obligations in the Code of Practice. The Contractor and relevant Sub-Contractor is also required by Clause 1.8.8 to support any government review and monitoring programme covering the impact of the Code of Practice.

2.48  At paragraph 13, the Code of Practice sets out in detail how disputes about any obligations on parties under the Code of Practice are to be resolved. That detail is replicated in Clauses 1.8.7 to 1.8.8.

2.49  The Code of Practice also states that if, following a request by the Authority, the Contractor fails to take the requisite action to comply with the Code, then the Local Authority will seek to enforce the terms of the Agreement. In addition, where the Contractor has not complied with the Code, the Authority will not be bound to consider that Contractor for future work. The drafting in the standard clauses deals with continuing non compliance by using the alternative dispute resolution mechanism (see Appendix 6) rather than some other provision in the Agreement.