Philip Goodchild

While Philip's main experience is in advising trustees of pension funds he also co-heads the pensions disputes resolution team and so is able to advise on all contentious as well as non-contentious matters, taking leading pensions law cases through the High Court and the Court of Appeal and on to the Supreme Court.

His technical skills and knowledge of general pension issues is of an extremely high level allowing him to provide clients with proportionate, practical commercial advice regarding their pension arrangements.

Philip is a member of the Association of Pension Lawyers and a regular commentator on legal issues affecting pension provision in the press and industry publications. He has sat on the legislation sub-committee of the Society of Pension Consultants and is a founder member of the Pension Lawyers Support Group. He regularly speaks at seminars and workshops on topical legal issues.

Recent experience includes: 

• Advising Trustees of the Barnardo's Staff Pension Scheme on deeds relating to the closure to benefit accruals of that fund and future benefit provision and advising the trustees on the case before the Supreme Court in relation to RPI/CPI pension increases discretion.
• Advising the Covea insurance company UK pension fund / Horizon Social Housing on various projects to reduce liabilities and to rewrite the trust deed and rules and to assist with a project to coordinate professional adviser support across 3 group pension funds. Advising on a closure to accruals of benefit.  Philip redrafted the trust deed of the Horizon plan.
• Providing strategic advice to the trustees of Paramount Pictures/UCI pension fund on scheme funding negotiations and advising on the implementation of several Flexible Apportionment Arrangements to deal with Section 75 debts arising under the Scheme as a result of employee movement around the group.

A good knowledge of the area of law and knows our scheme details well.