JUST 50 company pension schemes, each run by a handful of trustees, hold the key to a Government plan to free up their surplus funds to boost growth, according to a new report. 

The Chancellor has announced measures to make it easier for firms to access £150billion or more of excess money in their defined benefit pension plans. 

The value of these ‘gold-plated’ retirement schemes, which pay pensions based on a worker’s salary, is estimated at £1.2trillion – making them the largest pension pot of its kind.

Rachel Reeves wants to ease rules that limit what trustees who oversee these schemes can do with their surpluses, so that firms can use the unlocked money to invest or pay down debt. 

There are more than 4,800 such schemes in the UK, but just 50 of them control half the total assets, pensions consultancy LCP says in a report published tomorrow. 

Those schemes are overseen by fewer than 500 trustees in total. So these ‘pensions powerbrokers’ are vital to the Government’s plans succeeding, LCP says, but their voices ‘are rarely heard in the corridors of power’. ‘

Unless this changes, plans to ensure UK pension assets are used more productively to promote economic growth are likely to fail,’ the report warns. 

Trustees decide how pension money is invested and tend to be risk-averse, as their first duty is to ensure pension promises to scheme members are kept. 

‘Any reform will be ineffective if it is not grounded in a full understanding of the role and attitudes of trustees,’ said LCP’s Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister. 

‘Policy makers need to do more to address their concerns.’