When a person changes jobs they also leave their employer’s pension scheme. An employee can ask to have their pension rights transferred to the new scheme.
Alternatively, the pension rights earned in the former scheme have to be safeguarded. It used to be that such rights were frozen at the point the person left the scheme. This meant that people who changed jobs could end up with much smaller pensions than people who stayed with the one employer all their working lives. To rectify this, the Social Security (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 protected the preserved pension rights (excluding guaranteed minimum pensions) of early leavers from the effects of inflation by providing that early leavers have to have their pension rights revalued when they reach scheme pension age.
The Occupational Pensions (Revaluation) Order (Northern Ireland) 2022