FOI reference - FOI-176
Date - 19 October 2023
Request
Under the freedom of information act can you please let me know where you get your income from. And also what you do with penalties that you charge.
Response
The funding of The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is derived from two main sources:
- a grant-in-aid from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) which is recoverable from a levy on pension schemes and covers activities relating to the Pensions Act 2004 and the Pensions Act 2008
- a separate grant-in-aid from general taxation which funds Automatic Enrolment (AE)
Further detailed information on this funding can be found in our annual reports. Our most recently published annual reports and accounts is for the year 2022 to 2023 (PDF, 214 pages, 5249kb).
From the 2022 to 2023 report, page 162, outlines TPR’s net expenditure of £96.4 million, of which £62.7 million related to levy-funded activities and £33.7 million was attributable to AE. Page 167 outlines how we collect the levy on pensions schemes.
In the same report, pages 167 to 169 outlines what TPR does with the penalties that we collect. For the year 2022 to 2023, we collected money for four activities, these are:
- Levies account
- AE Penalty Notices
- Section 10 and chair’s statement penalty notices
- Master trust authorisation fees
All monies collected for these activities were transferred to His Majesty’s Treasury consolidated fund via the DWP