Equality and Human Rights Commission

If your employer provides an occupational pension or work or company pension scheme to their employees (or one is provided for them), the people running the scheme must avoid unlawful discrimination in how they run it. This includes all the different types of unlawful discrimination in the list at page avoiding direct and indirect discrimination.

For example:
A pension scheme that offers benefits to opposite-sex partners must give the same benefits to same-sex partners. If people have to be married to receive benefits, then the same benefits must be offered to civil partners. Not doing so would be discrimination because of sexual orientation.

The duty to make reasonable adjustments to remove barriers for disabled people applies to pension schemes. You can read more about reasonable adjustments to remove barriers for disabled people.

Specific rules apply where membership of an occupational pension scheme is part of your contract of employment and women and men are treated differently by the scheme. If this is the case, you should also read Decisions about pay and benefits for women and men (equal pay).

If you believe that your occupational pension scheme may be unlawfully discriminating against you, you should get expert advice from your trade union or another organisation.