The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) seventh annual PensionsWatch survey has found that the average pension pot of 373 directors of the 103 top UK companies surveyed is £3.4million, providing an average annual pension payout of £247,785 a year - a 23 per cent rise from last year.

The highest paid directors of each company were found to have pension pots providing an average of £333,664 annually, and a small number of directors will enjoy pensions of over a million pounds a year. The average director pension is now 30 times the amount of that of a workplace pension, at £8,320 a year.
Sixty-one per cent of the directors surveyed are also still receiving defined benefit (DB) pensions, compared to just 13.5 per cent of private workers.

The TUC is now calling for greater clarity and disclosure to aid examination of pension arrangements to ensure they are fair and reasonable, in light of these latest figures.

"With more and more people having their company pension schemes reduced, the lavish arrangements enjoyed by the UK's top bosses - now thirty times the value of ordinary workers' pensions - are nothing short of scandalous," commented Brendan Barber. "Top bosses justify their pensions, pay and bonuses on the grounds that they are rewards for success. But the stock market nose-dived in 2008 and yet the directors of these same companies have still managed to increase their pensions by over 20 per cent.

"If directors truly believe they are worth every last pound of their pensions, they should make their arrangements better known to both shareholders and their hard working staff, especially to those employees who are seeing their own company schemes slashed," Barber added.

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