New amendments to the Stakeholder Pension Schemes Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/1403) have been published (SI 2002/2098) and come into force on 9 September 2002. The terms of a new regulation 12, which requires scheme trustees or managers to make an annual declaration that the scheme has complied with the requirements of the Regs, double the period allowed for this to 6 months from each "reporting date". The first such date is a date chosen by the trustees or managers which is within 12 months of the date the scheme was registered with Opra. Each subsequent reporting date must be within 12 months of the previous one.

The detailed statement required also has to be formally validated within this period by the "reporting accountant". The new Amendment Regs arguably lessen the burden: instead of being required to state whether in his or her opinion "it was or was not unreasonable for the manager to make the statements contained in the declaration", as the Regs previously required, all the reporting accountant now has to state is that he or she has been given documentation showing that the trustees or managers have actually done what they said they did in arriving at their opinion, and that nothing has come to their attention which is inconsistent with the way trustees/managers describe that process in their statement.

Other relaxations include revision of the rule on who can be appointed as the reporting accountant (in future, basically anyone who is eligible for appointment as a company auditor); and in respect of with-profits funds, a reduction in the paperwork the reporting accountant has to deal with.

The new Regs follow a previous SI on this subject (SI 2002/1480). As we noted at the time, gathering and preparing the information required for the annual declaration involves a lot of work; this new SI is the outcome of a DWP review of whether it was all really necessary.