Pensions for New Employees - (Clauses 1.8.4)

2.46  Clause 1.8.8 reflects paragraph 10 of the Code of Practice which 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%.

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.