UK - The Pensions Regulator has cut the salary and working hours for its yet-to-be appointed chairman in response to the coalition government's call for public bodies to show pay restraint.
 
David Norgrove, the current chairman, is paid £110,000 for a three-day working week and is due to step down at the end of the year, but his successor will be offered a salary of £57,000 for a two-day working week - a 20% cut in the daily pay rate.
 
The regulator is also searching for a new chief executive, but has faced pressure from the Department for Work and Pensions to reduce the generosity of the pay package.
 
Tony Hobman, who left in May this year, was on a salary of £210,000 a year.
 
Meanwhile, BBC workers are set to blackout coverage of the Tory party conference as the Unite, Bectu and NUJ unions announced strike action on 5-6 October against proposals to plug the £2bn deficit in the corporation's pension scheme.
 
The proposals include closing the final salary scheme to new joiners, capping increases in pensionable pay at 1% (irrespective of pay rises and promotions) and raising the retirement age from 60 to 65.
 
The BBC has also proposed introducing a career-average scheme and increasing employee contributions from 4% of salary to 7%.
 
Property sales and further job cuts are also under consideration as a way to help cut the cost of the pension scheme.
 
Lastly, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is urging the government to press ahead with the introduction of auto-enrolment and the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) from 2012 or run the risk of undersaving by a large section of the working population. 

CBI said it preferred simplification of the rules to an exemption for micro-businesses, as companies that employ fewer than five staff make up 95% of businesses.
 
It wants auto-enrolment to kick-in only three months after someone starts a job, to avoid people on short-term assignments being auto-enrolled and to cut costs.

It also backs the simplification of NEST's "complex" charging structure and incentives for companies to operate better schemes, in particular a simple self-certification process for good defined contribution schemes.

The trade body supports the current phasing and staging timetables for different sizes of companies, but backs moving employment agencies to a common commencement date to avoid destabilising the agency work market.
 

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