Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) extended, helping pensioners across Hayes

The Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS), created to help pensioners who lose their pensions due to their sponsoring employer becoming insolvent, has been extended.

The scheme will be extended as follows:

• All members of pension schemes that started winding up between 1st January 1997 and 5th April 2005 where the sponsoring employer is insolvent will have their pensions topped up to a level of 80% of the core pension rights accrued in their scheme.
• The cap will be increased from £12,000 to £26,000 a year.
• The current minimum payment rule (de minimis) has been removed and anyone currently excluded from help from the scheme because their FAS payment would have been £520 per year (£260 for survivors) or less will now receive payments.
• Payments will continue to be made at age 65 unless early payments are due because the person is terminally ill or where they are the survivor of a qualifying member.
• Survivors will receive a total income from the qualifying pensions scheme and the FAS, equivalent to at least 50% of the total core income the member would have received from the scheme and from FAS had they lived.
• Initial payments will still be paid at the rate of 60%, but the de minimis has been removed and the cap increased to £26,000.
• The Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) Operational Unit will be reviewing all cases and contacting the member, representative or survivor to let them know the position.
• The Financial Assistance Scheme Operational Unit can be contacted on 0845 6019941.

As a result of the extension it is expected that all the estimated 125,000 people who have lost their pension will now receive at least 80% of their core expected pension – around three times the number who would have been helped before the extension was made.

Local MP John McDonnell asks local workers “are you being treated fairly?”

Local MP John McDonnell is urging workers across Hayes and Harlington to tell him if they have suffered poor treatment at work because they are an agency worker.

The call comes as the Government agrees that it will accept evidence submitted to it detailing ways in which agency workers are mistreated. This follows an ongoing campaign by Labour MPs including John McDonnell and leading trade unions to press the Government for UK legislation to tackle the abuse of agency workers – and stop unscrupulous employers using agency staff to drive down the pay and conditions of directly employed workers.

John McDonnell MP said “I want the workers in my constituency to tell me about their experiences as an agency worker. For some the flexibility of temporary agency working is a bonus but increasingly I am coming across instances where agency working is the only option on offer and with it comes job insecurity, poorer pay, no holiday and sick pay, and even cases of pay being docked to pay for essential equipment or training.

In this constituency alone there will be hundreds, possible thousands of agency workers, and across the economy there are almost 1.5 million. The Labour Party, as the party that stands up for working people, has a duty to ensure that every worker is treated equally and can access essential, basic protections. When agency labour is mistreated or being used to undercut the hard fought pay and conditions of their directly employed colleagues, we must challenge this. I appeal to the people I represent to help with this vital campaign.”


John McDonnell MP particularly wants to hear from you if you are an agency worker or work where there are agency workers and have encountered:

• Agency workers being paid less money than permanent workers doing the same job
• Agency workers denied holiday entitlement or sick pay
• Long term use of agency workers but no permanent position for them
• Deductions from agency workers’ pay to cover equipment, transport or accommodation costs

If you have a story to tell, write to John McDonnell MP at Constituency Office, Pump Lane, Hayes, Middlesex, UB3 3NB before the middle of May. The information you provide will be submitted to the Department of Trade and Industry as evidence of the need for protection for agency workers.