PLC Pensions is primarily aimed at pensions lawyers, whether they are in private practice or in-house. Given the depth of material that we will eventually cover, the service will also appeal to:

For law firms, the service is valuable whether or not they have existing professional support. Firms with dedicated professional support lawyers will be able to use the service to direct their internal resources where the greatest returns lie. For firms without specialist legal know-how capabilities, the service will give their pension lawyers a level of support that was previously unavailable to them. For more, see Benefits of subscribing to PLC Pensions below.

The service is designed and run by Practical Law Company's team of pension specialists. The team have extensive experience of all areas of pensions law in practice (see Professional support team below). They are supported by a consultation board that comprises leading pensions practitioners from a range of different backgrounds.

PLC Pensions provide a weekly updating service, delivered by e-mail. Updates are also available via the PLC Pensions homepage. We cover:

The most recent update items feature on the PLC Pensions homepage. We maintain an archive of past updates, and an archive of the weekly e-mails.

Examples of recent developments in the occupational pensions field covered in our updates include:

Our editorial policy is to cover the legal developments that have the greatest significance for pensions lawyers. PLC's professional support team monitor current awareness sources and review new developments in order to do this. Our main role is to relieve practitioners of some of the burden of keeping up to date with current developments.

PLC updates explain the relevant background to each new development, and provide legal and practical commentary, bearing in mind the needs of the busy practitioner. They include links to external source materials (for example, transcripts of new cases) and other materials within PLC Pensions (for example, relevant practice notes).

Subscribers can use the updates for internal training purposes. They can act as a basis for further discussion and can be integrated with subscribers’ training and client briefing materials.

PLC Pensions includes a body of practice notes containing succinct explanations of pensions law and practice in key areas. Practice notes focus on the practical application of the law to particular situations or transactions. We commission many of our practice notes from major law firms and other pensions professionals.

The practice notes currently available on PLC Pensions include notes on:

Our practice notes are continuously maintained by our experienced pensions specialists to keep pace with new developments. We will continue to publish further practice notes over the next year.

The service also includes a library of standard documents, standard clauses and drafting notes, including our Standard document, Pension scheme trust deed and rules. This reflects typical provisions seen in a trust deed and rules governing a UK private-sector occupational pension scheme that provides defined benefits on a final-salary or career-average revalued earnings basis. Few DB schemes are being set up these days, but subscribers have told us they would like to benchmark their own deeds against a PLC standard document. The document is maintained to reflect new developments and we are expanding the range of benefit options, including adding a money purchase section. We also publish amending deeds in light of recent developments, see Standard documents, Deed of amendment: Finance Act 2011 and Deed of amendment: flexible apportionment arrangements.

Other standard documents and drafting notes currently available include:

Most of the standard documents and clauses have integrated drafting notes. These give detailed guidance on the relevant legal, negotiating and drafting issues. PLC's pensions specialists update standard documents and drafting notes when new legislation comes into force or case law changes the existing law. This significant feature sets PLC Pensions apart from traditional sources of standard documents, and gives our users a key advantage. In addition, certain documents incorporate our PLC FastDraft technology which is a free software application to automatically generate a first draft of a document quickly and easily. It also allows users to import information from Companies House or their saved "projects" (for example, if they would like to re-use details of one pension scheme in several documents). See Legal updates, Pension deeds: automated drafting.

PLC Pensions also gives access to user-friendly checklists, flowcharts and other resources to help the busy practitioner.

The checklists currently available include:

Further checklists will be added over the next year.

PLC Pensions tracks the latest developments in market practice in the occupational pensions field (see Hot topics: news and analysis). Among other areas, we cover the impact of the Pensions Regulator on corporate transactions, developing practice in dealing with the employer debt legislation, and the latest research on executive pension provision.

In addition, we have recently launched three new resources which provide insights from pensions practitioners into topical issues:

The PLC Pensions Legislative and regulatory developments tracker provides a quick and user-friendly way of checking on significant new pensions legislation and regulatory guidance. Divided into four parts - covering current consultations, archived consultations, new legislation in force and forthcoming legislation - the tracker also includes consultations initiated by regulatory and government bodies such as the Pensions Regulator and Pension Protection Fund.

Additionally, PLC Pensions tracks recent court decisions that affect occupational pension schemes in the UK in our Case tracker. We follow the progress of significant decisions from first instance to the appeal stage, including references to the European Court of Justice. We cover selected determinations of the Pensions Ombudsman in the occupational pensions field in our Pensions Ombudsman tracker.

We also provide a reverse citator If you need to check which are the main legislative provisions or cases about a particular area, you can search by topic in our Key topics citator and you will be directed to the relevant provisions or cases.

A subscription to PLC Pensions gives access to relevant articles that are published in PLC Magazine and other PLC publications. Over many years, these publications have included practical articles on important areas of pensions law and in-depth coverage of new developments (in the form of the PLC magazine monthly bulletins). These materials are all available through the topic pages or the search facility. Our articles include:

The PLC Glossary contains definitions of key legal and technical terms used in the business law context. It is not limited to pensions terms and is based on an archive of business legal know-how developed by PLC over its 16 years of existence.

PLC Pensions provides a directory of links to many external websites (for example, government departments and regulators) and documents (such as guidance notes). For a full list, see External resources.

The service is designed to:

PLC can be the invisible knowledge foundation for a law firm:

PLC Pensions will be a valuable resource for pensions practitioners outside the legal profession, whether they work in a commercial, consultancy or regulatory environment. Trustees, pensions managers, scheme administrators, company management, regulatory bodies and pensions consultants will all find that PLC Pensions will enable them to: