Thinking Long-Term About Pensions, Crawley Observer Column, Wednesday 18th March 2026

This week, I was delighted to welcome Torsten Bell, Minister for Pensions, to Crawley to open the newly refurbished home of The People’s Partnership.

The company, which has been based in Crawley since 1963, was first founded by the trade unions and building federations as ‘Buildings & Civil Engineering’ to provide employment insurance for construction workers. It’s now one of the UK’s largest pensions providers, with one in five workers having a workplace pension with The People’s Partnership.

To see the company continue to invest in Crawley is good news for the town, helping diversify the range of local employment.

When the universal state pension was introduced in 1946, women could claim it at 60 and men at 65, but average male life expectancy was only 64. From this year, the state pension age will rise to 67, but average life expectancy is now 79 for men and 82 for women. Our general expectation is now that retirement will form a much larger part of our life than it was ever designed to support.

That requires a lot more planning. As a species, our brains prioritise short-term issues over larger long-term issues. Unfortunately, when it comes to pensions, the compounding effect of investments means a good decision made today is worth more long-term than a good decision made tomorrow.

Labour’s Pension Schemes Bill seeks to make it far easier for savers to take control of their money, while introducing new protections and strengthening the regulatory regime to protect people’s pensions.

Despite these improvements, the pensions landscape is constantly changing and new risks are now emerging, with increasing numbers of more unscrupulous providers now entering the market and where work still needs to be done to protect savers.

One such issue surrounds the use of immediate rewards for transferring pensions today being used to cover up huge costs on the back-end. For instance, an Amazon gift card today, but no lump sum when you retire. Impartial advice is available from services like Pension Wise and, as ever when it comes to pensions, the important thing is to focus on the long-term.