BP Blocks Pension Fund Trustee Recommendations for Fifth Consecutive Year – (23/04/2026)

BP Pensioner Group calls on BP’s new leaders to resolve long-running pension dispute now with Pension Ombudsman

  • On April 1, 2026, the Trustee of the BP Pension Fund – chaired by Brendan Nelson reported that BP had rejected the Trustee’s recommended increase to the pensions paid to Fund members for the fifth consecutive year – yet again reneging on a longstanding policy to match inflation.
  • On each occasion, the Trustee had determined that the Fund could afford to at least partially offset the 11% fall in the purchasing power of the pension incurred in recent years due to high inflation. This was endorsed by the Fund’s independent actuary.
  • BP has said that it blocked the Trustee recommendations after considering a wide range of factors “including the funding position of the fund and the financial impact of any discretionary award on bp.”
  • However:
    • None of the Trustee’s recommendations required a single penny of cash contribution by the Company.
    • The Fund has reported substantial, sustained surpluses for the past 10 years and today the Fund surplus is in the region of £4 billion or a Funding Level of 127%
    • The Fund qualifies in regulatory terms as ‘low dependency’ status. i.e. the risk of BP ever being required to make new contributions is vanishingly small.
    • This is because the Fund is closed to new members and to new benefit accrual and the Trustees have pursued a strategy for the past 15 years at least of progressively moving Fund investments into ‘liability matching’ assets with appropriate hedging against inflation and interest rate movements.
  • The BP Pensioner Group and a large group of BP pensioners attending BP’s AGM on 23rd April called upon the new Chairman, Albert Manifold and the new CEO, Meg O’Neill to revisit the matter with fresh eyes by agreeing to meet with representatives of the pensioner group – something previous BP leaders had failed to do.

The Pensions Ombudsman

  • Members of the BP Pensioner Group have submitted a formal complaint and claim to the Pensions Ombudsman for determination.
  • Since 1989, BP leaders and BP Pension Fund Trustee directors assured BP staff and pensioners that the Company and Trustee intended to follow a carefully articulated Pension Increase Policy (PIP) – one that would maintain the real purchasing power of pensions when the UK Pension Fund had “sufficient resources” to do so.
  • At no time, in the subsequent three decades, has the Trustee or BP informed its 56,000 UK pension fund members that the Pension Increase Policy would no longer apply nor be honoured in line with its original purpose.
  • From that PIP assurance and its promulgation by the Trustee and BP – the reasonable expectations of Fund members were engendered. As a consequence, many thousands of staff made important life decisions regarding their plans and savings for their retirement years as well as for those of their dependants.
  • The BPPG believes that the decision-making processes adopted and decisions made by BP and the Trustee in 2022 and 2023 (and later) were legally flawed.

Notes to Editors

  • The BP Pensioner Group was formed in May 2023 and has grown to more than 3,000 members.
  • The BP Fund reported a £3.9 billion surplus of assets over liabilities at end 2024 and a £2.8 billion surplus remaining should a ‘Buy-Out’ with an insurance company be completed.
  • BP vetoed the Trustee recommendations (which were endorsed by the Fund’s independent actuary) to make discretionary increases to the pension in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to partially offset the impact of inflation. As a consequence the purchasing power of the pension has fallen by more than 11%.
  • The average BP pension is c. £18,000 per year. Of the c. 57,000 members of the pension fund, some 13,000 are over the age of 80. The average pension has declined by £2,000 pa for each and every year of that person’s remaining life due to BP blocking discretionary increases.
  • At the same time as rejecting the Trustee recommendations, BP enjoyed record windfall profits arising from soaring oil and gas prices which were a primary source of UK pensioner inflation. BP’s then CEO described the company as a “cash machine”.