Welcome to Barnett Waddingham’s Trustee Meetings Handbook.

This handbook is designed to assist anyone attending trustee meetings - before, during and after meetings. It can be used as a whole or section by section. Our aim is that it will:

• provide a summary of the background behind some of the business which takes place
• suggest further reading
• make some suggestions for how to get the most out of meetings, and 
• provide ideas for actions to take before or during meetings.

It will also be useful for new trustees who are still getting to grips with their role.

The handbook will help trustees to plan the training they need in order to be able to contribute as much as possible in the role and also to comply with the Trustee Knowledge and Understanding Requirements. This could take a variety of different forms including self-study and training sessions run by advisers. We have given suggestions for further reading in each section. In addition, the Trustee toolkit, The Pensions Regulator’s free online learning system is an excellent resource.

The handbook is aimed at trustees of a typical private sector trust-based defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) scheme. Sometimes different requirements apply to trustees who are professional, or to schemes in particular circumstances, for example those with fewer than 100 members. If something does not sound familiar then perhaps your scheme is exempt due to its circumstances. You can check by reading the relevant publication from The Pensions Regulator which will give more detail than this summary, by speaking to your chair of trustees or asking your advisers.

When producing this handbook we have deliberately focused on guidance given by The Pensions Regulator, but we have also included some views of our own relating to good practice.

We hope that you will find this handbook useful.