Due to the increasing complexity of implementing the Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP), the Pensions Minister, Laura Trott, announced in June 2023 that the PDP would be delayed, and that large to medium pension schemes (like the Local Government Pension Scheme) would be required to ‘connect’ to the Pensions Dashboard by 31 October 2026.
For reference, the PDP is a government-led initiative to allow people to view all their pensions benefits online in one single place (i.e. a ‘dashboard’). Once pension schemes are ‘connected’ to the Pensions Dashboard, people will only need to sign up and login to see the current and future values of their collective pension benefits.
However, developing the IT infrastructure to allow people’s pensions data from multiple organisations to be viewed in a single place, as well as complying with Data Protections laws, is both an ambitious and challenging task for organisations to achieve. Nevertheless, the pensions industry acknowledges how beneficial Pensions Dashboards will be for the general public, so the EAPF, like other pensions providers, is dedicated to achieving compliance by working closely with Capita.