Cheviot Pension: what it offers, how it works and how to complain

The Cheviot Pension is a workplace pension you join through your employer. You and usually your employer pay contributions into it each month, and the minimum total contribution is 8% on your total earnings between £6,240 and £50,270¹. It is a money purchase, or defined contribution, scheme, which means your retirement pot depends on what goes in and how the investments perform, not on a promise of a set income².

If you are already a member, the practical questions are usually about how much you can pay in, what happens if you stop working for that employer, how to move money in or out, and what your options are when you retire. If you are being auto enrolled and wondering whether to stay, the answer turns on the tax relief you get, what your employer adds, and the fact that opting out means giving up both.

This page covers what the scheme offers, how contributions and tax relief work, the funds and the default strategy, your retirement options, transfers, early and ill-health benefits, scams, complaints and protection. It does not give advice, and it does not quote the scheme's charges, which change and are set out on the scheme's own website.

What the Cheviot Pension offers members

The Cheviot Pension is a workplace scheme run for employees of participating employers. Contributions are paid monthly by you and usually by your employer, and the minimum total contribution is 8% of your total earnings between £6,240 and £50,270¹. That 8% is the auto-enrolment floor, not a cap: you can pay up to 100% of your earnings into the scheme in each tax year, subject to the annual allowance rules that apply to all pensions².

The scheme is a money purchase, or defined contribution, arrangement, which the scheme itself describes as the type of pension where your pot is built from contributions and investment returns rather than a formula based on salary and service². That distinction matters more than any other single fact on this page. In a defined benefit scheme the employer carries the investment risk and the promise is about income; here the pot is yours, the investment risk is yours, and what you end up with depends on contributions, charges and how the funds perform.

The Cheviot Trust is not-for-profit, unlike most of the pensions industry, and is managed by a Board of Trustees representing both employers and members². That governance point is worth knowing because the trustees, not the employer, are responsible for running the scheme in members' interests.

If you are comparing this with other ways of saving, the pensions guide sets out how workplace, personal and stakeholder pensions differ, and the pension providers directory lists who operates in the market.

How contributions and tax relief work

The government encourages retirement saving by giving tax relief on pension contributions, which either reduces your tax bill or increases your fund³. Under the Cheviot Pension, that relief reaches you through the payroll system¹. How it arrives depends on which payroll method your employer uses, and the two methods are not identical in what they do to your National Insurance.

That last row is where the Cheviot Pension's own rules matter. The scheme states that if you do not pay tax, you will not get tax relief on your pension contributions under the Cheviot pension arrangement¹. Official guidance elsewhere says a non-taxpayer on a low income automatically gets tax relief, and that someone earning £6,240 or less, or between £6,240 and £10,000, or at State Pension age and over and not automatically enrolled, might get some relief and should check with whoever runs the scheme⁵. The two positions are not the same, so if you are a low earner or a non-taxpayer, ask the scheme directly rather than assuming.

Tax relief on what you pay in runs up to 100 per cent of your earnings, as long as you are under 75⁴. Higher-rate taxpayers qualify for relief at 40%, and additional-rate taxpayers at 45%⁶. The personal tax guide explains how those rates interact with your overall tax position.

Cheviot funds and the Lifeplan default strategy

When you join, you are automatically invested in the Cheviot Lifeplan, which uses your Target Retirement Date to work out how to invest for you; if you have not set a date, State Pension Age is used instead². In the Lifeplan the Trustee takes the investment decisions for you and aims to provide relatively stable growth¹. That is the default: it happens unless you choose something else.

If you would rather make your own choices, the scheme offers three types of fund:

• Cheviot funds, which are invested across a range of assets¹
• Equity funds, which invest in the stock market¹
• Specialist funds, which aim to meet certain religious, ethical or investment needs¹

The three groups behave differently. The Cheviot funds spread risk across asset types; equity funds are more exposed to stock market movements, which means more volatility in both directions; specialist funds are chosen for a particular purpose rather than for a risk profile.

Changing strategy is a matter of telling the scheme which fund or funds you want. The investing guide explains how fund risk and diversification work in general terms, which is useful background before you decide.

Your options at retirement: tax-free cash, drawdown or a secure income

At retirement you can usually take 25% of your account as tax-free cash, from the Cash Fund, and keep the remaining 75% invested for flexible drawdown². That 25% figure is the scheme's own description of what usually happens, and it matches the general rule that when you retire you normally take some of your pension pot as a tax-free cash lump sum⁷.

Beyond the cash, the choices are the same ones that apply across the pension system:

• A scheme pension, a secured pension for life paid out of the scheme assets or purchased from an insurance company⁸
• An annuity, bought with your pot⁸
• A drawdown pension, where you draw an income directly from your pension fund⁸

Each does something different with the risk. A scheme pension or an annuity converts your pot into a guaranteed income, and you give up control of the capital in exchange. Drawdown keeps the pot invested and under your control, and you carry the investment risk.

The order in which people usually approach this is to take the tax-free cash if they want it, decide whether they need a guaranteed income to cover essential spending, and use drawdown for whatever is left. The pensions guide covers how these options compare across the market, and the retirement income guidance from government sets out the steps in order⁹.

Flexible drawdown: income is not guaranteed

Drawdown is the option where your pension stays invested and you take money out of it as and when you need it. The attraction is flexibility and control. The risk is stated plainly by the official guidance:

That single sentence carries most of what a member needs to understand. In drawdown there is no promise about how long the money lasts. A pot that falls in value early in retirement, combined with withdrawals, can be depleted faster than expected, and the money taken out is generally taxable as income rather than tax-free. The 25% tax-free cash is the exception, and it is a one-off.

Drawdown suits people who have other guaranteed income to cover the essentials, who can absorb falls in value without changing their spending, and who want control over when and how much they take. It suits people less well if the pot is the main source of income and there is no cushion against a bad market. The pensions guide sets out how drawdown sits alongside annuities and scheme pensions.

Transferring pensions into or out of Cheviot

You can normally transfer other pension savings into your Cheviot pension with no extra charge². The scheme also states that there is no additional charge for transferring into the scheme, and that a transfer value out is the value of the account when it is disinvested². In other words, the amount you get on the way out is what the investments are worth at the point they are sold, not a figure fixed in advance.

The general process for a transfer runs in this order¹¹:

1. Check that your current scheme allows transfers out.
2. Make sure you will not lose any benefits by leaving.
3. Decide which scheme to transfer into.
4. Check whether you need to pay for financial advice.
5. Ask your current provider for a transfer value.
6. Ask the new scheme to start the transfer.

You can transfer a UK pension pot to another registered UK pension scheme, and in some cases it is possible to transfer to a new provider after you have started to draw retirement benefits¹². You can usually transfer or consolidate at any point unless the scheme rules list restrictions¹¹.

The step people skip is the second one. Leaving a scheme can mean giving up benefits that are not obvious from the transfer value, and a pension transfer usually cannot be undone, so it is worth being sure you will be better off before committing¹¹. The pensions guide covers transfers in more detail.

Taking benefits early, ill-health and death benefits

The scheme states that you may be able to take your pension savings before age 55 if you are unable to work due to serious illness or injury, with written medical evidence². That is a narrower test than simply retiring early, and it turns on medical evidence rather than on your job ending.

The wider rules on ill-health retirement vary by scheme:

• Some defined contribution providers may boost your pension if you are retiring early due to an illness likely to affect your life expectancy¹³.
• In the NHS scheme in Scotland, a former member with preserved benefits who is too ill to undertake any employment may qualify for early retirement on a preserved pension, with no reduction for early retirement and no enhancement¹⁴.

Those are different schemes with different rules, and they show why the specific wording of your own scheme matters.

On death benefits, the Cheviot Pension states that if you die before taking benefits, your savings will be paid as a lump sum, usually free of Inheritance Tax, subject to tax limits². The pensions guide explains how death benefits and nomination forms work across pension types.

Pension scams and where to get guidance

Pension scams are on the increase, and they tend to appear at the moments when money is moving: when members seek to transfer their benefits to a different arrangement, take early retirement or take their benefits¹⁵. That is why the warning material arrives with your retirement pack and your annual benefit statements rather than at random¹⁵.

The rules require schemes to give members clear information on how to spot a scam in relevant communications, including the retirement wake-up pack and annual benefit statements, and warnings may also appear on the scheme's website¹⁵. Warning signs the legislation treats as incentives include:

• A free pension review¹⁷
• Early access to your savings before normal minimum pension age¹⁷
• A savings advance or cashback from your pension savings¹⁷

If you think you have been targeted, scams should be reported to the pension provider, the Financial Conduct Authority, and Action Fraud¹⁸. Free and impartial guidance is available from MoneyHelper, which provides free and impartial debt advice, money guidance and pension guidance to members of the public¹⁹. For decisions about your own circumstances, official guidance is to speak to a financial adviser, and independent financial or pensions advisers usually charge for giving advice²⁰. The scams and fraud guide covers how to check an approach and where to report it.

Complaints and how your savings are protected

Formal complaints to the Cheviot Pension must be made in writing, and the scheme has a formal dispute procedure². The member contact details are:

If you are unhappy with how your workplace pension is managed, you can complain to MoneyHelper or the Pensions Ombudsman²².

The Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints about pensions and annuities, and it received 931 complaints about personal pensions in the first quarter of 2026/27²³. Uphold rates give a sense of how often complaints succeed: 44% of personal pension complaints were upheld in the fourth quarter of 2024/25, and 51% in the first quarter of 2025/26²⁵. The ombudsman has upheld complaints where a personal pension plan was invested in high-risk funds, telling the business to compare the actual return the member achieved with a benchmark return²⁷.

On protection, the picture depends on what you hold. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme publishes a guide to pension protection that tells members to ask whether FSCS protects their pension, how much of the pot is protected, what other protections apply, whether they are still protected if they buy an annuity, what happens if they buy other products with the pot, what would happen if something happened to the business, and whether a transfer in would also be protected²⁸. If your employer's scheme were to wind up with insufficient assets, the Pension Protection Fund protects members, and in those circumstances a refund of contributions, minus tax and National Insurance, is likely to have been paid to excluded members²⁹.