On the go: The Pensions Ombudsman has ordered Town Wall Tavern to pay a former employee £1,000 and make up for missing pension contributions.
‘Mr N’ complained that his former employer had deducted contributions worth £2,093.95 from his pay without paying them into his pension scheme. He raised this complaint with the pub in September 2021, having left its employment in July that year.
Mr N said that contributions were either paid late into the scheme or not at all. After failing to receive a response from his former employer with regards to his complaint, Mr N went to the ombudsman.
He had been employed by Town Wall Tavern from September 2019 to July 2021. His contributions for November 2019 were paid into the scheme on October 16 2020. The following month, the scheme reported the employer to the Pensions Regulator.
Mr N’s ombudsman caseworker attempted to contact the pub, but also failed to receive any response. She was therefore forced to rely solely on the information provided by Mr N and took the view that he had been caused “serious distress and inconvenience” by the matter, awarding him £1,000.
Town Wall Tavern did not respond to the caseworker’s opinion, and the case was subsequently handed over to Pensions Ombudsman Anthony Arter.
“The employer’s failure to pay employee and employer contributions into the scheme amounts to unjust enrichment and has caused Mr N to suffer a financial loss,” Arter noted in a decision notice dated December 19.
“The employer shall take remedial action to put this right. Mr N is entitled to a distress and inconvenience award in respect of the serious ongoing non-financial injustice which he has suffered,” he continued.
“This was exacerbated by the employer’s failure to respond during my office’s investigation into Mr N’s complaint.”
Town Wall Tavern has been given 28 days to pay the £1,000 compensation and produce a schedule of contributions for Mr N to approve.
Within a fortnight of this being approved, the pub must pay the missing contributions into the scheme, establish whether the late payment of these contributions has led to fewer units being purchased than otherwise would have been, and covering any “reasonable” administrative costs.
