The legislation.gov.uk text of Statutory Instrument 2026/449, the National Employment Savings Trust (Amendment) Order 2026, shows a focused but important change to NEST’s benefit rules. Made on 21 April 2026 and due to come into force on 29 April 2026, the instrument amends article 32 of the National Employment Savings Trust Order 2010, which sets out what the trustee may pay from a member’s pension account. For readers tracking pensions regulation, this is a decumulation measure rather than an auto-enrolment reform. It does not alter employer duties, contribution levels or NEST’s status as the workplace pension scheme established under the Pensions Act 2008. Its purpose is to widen the forms of benefit that can be used when savings are converted into retirement income or paid following a member’s death.
The most direct change concerns members who are alive. Under the amended wording, the trustee may provide one or more authorised benefits, including a lump sum, a scheme pension, a lifetime annuity purchased in the member’s name, or a drawdown pension. The addition of scheme pension and drawdown pension is the central legal change in the Order. The insertion of the words one or more of also matters. Read in the context of article 32, it makes clear that the trustee is not confined to a single form of benefit where scheme rules and pensions tax law permit different forms of payment to be used. That gives NEST a clearer statutory basis for a broader set of retirement options than the earlier drafting allowed on its face.
The Order also widens what may be paid after a member has died. According to the explanatory note published on legislation.gov.uk, NEST may now provide a dependant’s scheme pension or a drawdown pension to a dependant, nominee or successor. Those additions sit alongside the death benefit options already provided for in article 32. This change is significant because post-death pension arrangements are often more complex than the choices available to the member during retirement. By placing these routes directly into the NEST benefit rules, the instrument gives the trustee a more complete legal basis for dealing with survivor benefits inside the scheme.
The legal route followed for the amendment is also set out clearly in the instrument. The Secretary of State made the Order using powers in sections 67 and 144 of the Pensions Act 2008. Before making the instrument, the Act required the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the trustees, and the trustees in turn had to consult the members’ panel and the employers’ panel before giving that consent. Parliamentary approval was required as well. The Order records that a draft was laid before Parliament and approved by resolution of each House before the final version was made. It is signed on behalf of the Secretary of State by Torsten Bell, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, on 21 April 2026.
The drafting does not create new pensions definitions for NEST alone. Instead, the amended provisions import established meanings from Schedule 28 to the Finance Act 2004. Dependants, nominees, successors, drawdown pension, scheme pension and dependants’ scheme pension all take their meaning from that tax legislation. That drafting choice keeps the amended NEST rules tied to terms already used across the wider pensions system. For trustees, administrators and advisers, that should reduce uncertainty when working out who may receive a benefit, what type of payment is being made, and how the payment fits within the tax rules governing registered pension schemes.
In practical terms, the Order is best understood as an enabling measure. It gives NEST’s trustee the legal power to pay or arrange a wider set of benefits, including drawdown, but it does not by itself settle every operational question about delivery, product design or member communications. Those matters remain for scheme administration within the wider regulatory and tax regime. For employers, the immediate effect is limited because the amendment concerns how benefits are paid, not how workers are enrolled or how contributions are collected. For members and beneficiaries, the effect is more direct: NEST now has legal authority to support a broader range of retirement and death benefit options. The explanatory note says no full impact assessment was prepared because no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector was expected. The instrument extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the revised rules apply across the UK from 29 April 2026.