I’m really glad that I found Felicia and this conversation on her linked in feed. She has joined Pension PlayPen and I was not gracious enough to get connected. I’ve read this thread and realise my mistake – this is a link to the post below.
Women are getting short-changed on pensions when they are off work to have a baby. Felicia Flinders explains how and wonders why.
These are the comments that follow, telling you that there are people outside the pension bubble who do give a damn for women’s pensions!
I am pleased to find people like Felecia, they are rare souls and they are not nurtured within the financial services community.
We care “in abstract” for the pensions of women and ignore the practicalities of funding women’s pensions. If there are people in HR and Finance reading this who change their policy towards women on maternity then Felecia will have done good with this post.
This is the proper use of social media and space on social media. If Felecia wants to send her thoughts to me, she will – as Gareth Morgan does – get prime place!
I hope that the matter bought up on Felicia Flinders’ thread, get’s wider publicity than it’s had so far!
http://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/family-and-care/becoming-a-parent/maternity-and-paternity-leave-and-your-pension
The law is probably more complicated than it should be, but it generally requires employer contributions to DC schemes to continue when employees are on (up to 6 months) ordinary maternity leave and (a minimum of three months) paid additional maternity leave.
Contractual entitlement to paid maternity leave and / or pension contributions while on maternity leave can be (and increasingly are) better than the statutory minimum requirement.
DB schemes generally only allow for up to 9 months (ie 6 months ordinary and 3 months of additional) leave to be pensionable but the LGPS just changed that to 12 months from April 2026 (and hopefully other major schemes will follow soon).
We will have to see what CDC schemes do!
They are in this respect , automatic enrolment workplace pensions; so they will have to follow the same rules as everyone else
The statutory rules set a minimum floor – not necessarily a desired (or appropriate) outcome. (Though improvements over that minimum will generally be for employers rather than scheme providers.)
There’s even a petition calling for the government to apply the (very welcome) changes to the LGPS in this area to all the other schemes it manages (please feel free to sign it!):
https://www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/end-the-gender-pension-gap-for-public-sector-women