2.5% increase & Ombudsman letters
Heineken's recent announcement of making a 2.5% increase in discretionary pensions from November, while welcome, is only half the inflation rate at July 2011 as measured by the growth in the Retail Price Index. It follows last year when no increase at all was made.
Heineken's undertaking in 2008 at the time of the takeover of S&N was that they intended to continue the long standing S&N practice of providing discretionary increases each year in line with retail price inflation (capped at 5%) for pensions built up in the scheme before 1997. For the second year running they have failed to honour this undertaking.
Since Heineken took over S&N in 2008, those pensioners who have to rely solely on discretionary increases in their S&N pension to protect them from the effects of inflation have seen their real incomes fall by 6%.
Even more than ever we need the Ombudsman to investigate all the circumstances surrounding this issue. You can find out how to do this in the Resources page of our website:http://www.snpensionsgroup.com/snresources/ . Additionally, we have very recently been advised to send a covering letter with our formal complaints to the Ombudsman stating that, as well as our own complaint, we wish to adopt the arguments contained in SNPG’s correspondence with the Trustee - see section 8 of http://www.snpensionsgroup.com/snresources/. This document should then be sent with your application to the Ombudsman. We are advised to do this for all new complaints to the Ombudsman as well as those that have already been sent when it can be added retrospectively.