Our Services & Costs

Our main pensions services are as follows. Click a link to find out more:

Restructuring & Wind-ups

Whether you are an employer or a trustee, there is no denying that pension schemes are both complex and expensive to run. As an employer, your focus will be on managing your liability to the scheme.

Documentation

The key to most pension schemes is the trust deed and rules. Not only does it provide the legal framework for the scheme, it also sets out the benefits payable to members and their dependants.

Given the complex legislative and regulatory framework, the current financial climate and the personal interest of members in ensuring the security of their retirement benefits, it is no surprise that pensions disputes are increasingly common.

Legal Issues

Your pension scheme can have a major impact on your business. Our experience, coupled with our commercial outlook, mean that we can provide you with the specialist advice you need.

Trustee Issues

Each year, the day-to-day task of running a pension scheme becomes a greater burden on trustees, who are also subject to increasing scrutiny from the Pensions Regulator.

We provide our clients with a full range of pensions law services including:

Disputes and litigation
Dealings with the Pensions Regulator and other regulatory bodies
Governance
Documentation
Pension liability management
Pension scheme management
Pension scheme restructuring
Corporate transactions
Outsourcing
Technical pension advice
Public sector pensions

Our recent work includes:

Acting for the trustees of a FTSE 250 company pension scheme on funding negotiations with the sponsoring employer.
Advising the trustees of a small pension scheme on CPI/RPI issues.
Advising the trustees of an international fashion company pension scheme on the abolition of the Default Retirement Age.
Providing advice to the trustees of an energy company pension scheme in respect of State Scheme Premiums (these were generally abolished by the DWP in 1997).
Advice on Auto Enrolment and the consolidation of the Trust Deed and Rules for the trustees of a pension scheme of a national charity.
Advising the trustees of a final salary pension scheme whose sponsoring employer has became insolvent due to an EU embargo on its activities.
Advising a sponsoring employer on a dispute regarding liability with an independent trustee.
Advising trustees on an employer’s proposal to close their scheme to future accrual.

Service levels

Each of our clients has their own requirements and the services we provide are designed around these.

Unless you required an alternative service level, we would commit to the following:

All telephone calls and emails will be responded to on the same working day.
Simple enquiries will be dealt with at the time they are made.
For matters that require us to research a point or review documents and provide written advice, we would normally do this within 5 business days (unless of course the matter is urgent in which case we would deal with it immediately).

If we were instructed by you, we would review your needs and expectations and then agree service levels, costs and methods of working with you.

All of our partners meet with their clients on a regular basis (at no charge to the client) to ensure that our services meet their expectations.

We will attend meetings as regularly as you want us to, plan (where possible) activities for the whole scheme year and set measurable objectives and milestones with you.

Fees

Our expertise and exposure to most pension issues that our clients are likely to encounter means that we are able to provide you with a genuinely useful and high quality service on a fixed fee, capped fee or hourly basis to suit you.

We will invest time and effort into our relationship with you to ensure we know your objectives and will agree a legal budget for everything you instruct us on.

We will encourage you to pick up the phone and discuss issues and ideas without charge. This will help you and us achieve the best outcomes without unanticipated costs. It will also help you plan your work and ensure that the advice you require is always delivered on time and within budget.

We never charge for work unless you agree to this in advance and we always stick to any agreed costs so there are never any surprises about fees.
We put no caveats on our fee arrangements. We will attend meetings at your preferred venues and we will not charge you for:

Ad-hoc telephone calls (in fact will encourage you to pick up the phone and discuss issues and ideas without charge).
Travel time.
Photocopying.
Faxes.
Conference calls.

In this way you will be able to control your legal spend accurately and effectively.

Neon Legal