Blog: Why early pension access was a step too far

The changes to pensions legislation from April 2011 are without doubt the most sweeping since the advent of simplification in April 2006. We have to deal with changes to the annual allowance, the introduction of carry forward, ASP and USP being replaced by capped and flexible drawdown and the introduction of the minimum income requirement. It is therefore gratifying to see that we do not also have to deal with early access to pension schemes. You may recall that the government issued a consultative document in December 2010, where comments were required by 25 February 2011. The outcome o...