The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) yesterday published The 2010/11 Pension Protection Levy Consultation. The document includes:

• Confirmation that the Board aims to collect an overall levy of £720 million (= £720m estimated for 2009/10 x earnings indexation);
• Levy scaling factor set at 1.64, a reduction from 2.22 during 2009/10 and 3.77 in 2008/09;
• The "scheme-based levy multiplier" set at 0.000145, a reduction from 0.000162 in 2009/10 and 0.000165 in 2008/09;
• Plans to reduce the cap on the risk-based part of the pension protection levy from 1% to 0.5 % of liabilities, to protect the most vulnerable 10% of schemes; and
• A proposed change to the way probabilities of insolvency for foreign employers are calculated.

The consultation will run until Wednesday 11 November 2009.

As part of this consultation, the PPF published the draft levy determination for 2010/11, and all documents associated with this can be found on the 2010/11 Determination page

Publication of the levy proposals for 2010/11 follows a PPF consultation earlier in the year on the future development of the levy, to which the Board responded on 30 July. The two key decisions made by the Board were:

• it remains committed to developing a levy that more accurately reflects schemes' long-term risks, and
• two industry groups will be set up to look at refining proposals for a new levy formula.