Industry experts have suggested that there will be "collective sigh of relief" after the government confirmed that it will introduce legislation to deal with issues arising from the Virgin Media judgment.

The government update confirmed that it is aware of the increased uncertainty seen in the pensions industry following last year’s Court of Appeal judgment in Virgin Media Limited v NTL Pension Trustees Limited.

"We recognise that schemes and sponsoring employers need clarity around scheme liabilities and member benefit levels in order to plan for the future," it stated.

Given this, it confirmed that it will introduce legislation to give affected pension schemes the ability to retrospectively obtain written actuarial confirmation that historic benefit changes met the necessary standards.

Scheme obligations will otherwise be unaffected and the government will continue to maintain its robust framework for the funding of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in order to protect people’s hard-earned pensions.

Announced following repeated calls for the government to provide clarity on the judgement, the news has been broadly welcomed by industry experts, with Barnett Waddingham partner and head of alternative risk transfer, Richard Gibson, suggesting that the "industry is heaving a sigh of relief" at the news the government will address this issue.

This was echoed by Arc Pensions Law senior partner, Anna Rogers, who said that "the industry will breathe a collective sigh of relief to hear that DB schemes with a section 37 problem will be allowed to fix it retrospectively".

The news has been particularly welcomed by those who worked on the campaign encouraging change from the government, as Association of Consulting Actuaries (ACA) chair, Stewart Hastie, emphasised that “an immense amount of effort has been put in by both the group members and Department for Work and Pensions to help sort out this problem".

"The uncertainty and potential for unforeseen costs that might have fallen on pension schemes represented a huge challenge," he continued.

"For our part, we want to thank all those involved from organisations across the industry that have worked together on achieving today’s decision. The hard work will now continue in fine tuning the necessary legislation and guidance.”

However, Rogers warned that "there will still have to be a process and we await the details".

"It may not be easy to establish on the facts whether the test was met at the time, which could be the best part of 30 years ago," she continued.

"But at least the door is now open to a sensible solution that means DB schemes can get on with doing what they are supposed to do namely providing the promised benefits to members."

This sentiment was shared by Burges Salmon partner and head of pensions, Richard Knight, who said that "schemes will doubtless be asking themselves and their advisers whether this is the silver bullet that solves any and every issue arising from the decision".

"For example, where evidence of confirmation is missing there will still be decisions to be made about whether the confirmation was needed at the time (not always straightforward to establish), and whether the retrospective confirmation can be given now," he explained.

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