News

Wedgwood Museum to take court action to protect its collection from pension administrators 1

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 25 Oct 2010

The Wedgwood Museum is seeking legal advice on whether its assets, which include a 250-year collection of china, will be protected from administrators seeking funds for a £134m pension shortfall.

The Wedgwood Museum (t/o £2.6m) went into administration in April this year after it was served with a substantial pension debt by the company that was set up to manage the Wedgwood Group pension plan.

The museum is in the unfortunate position because of its participation in a multi-employer pension scheme covering a number of employers in the Waterford Wedgwood Group. Five of the museum’s staff are among the Wedgwood Group pension fund’s 7,000 members.

When the Waterford Wedgwood group went into administration in 2009, the museum found itself the remaining last employer in that scheme.

Therefore, the museum technically became responsible for a pension debt that is in the region of £134m under pension legislation introduced in 2005.

In a parliamentary debate on the museum last week, Labour MP Tristan Hunt complained: “We have the madness of a £60,000 pension liability being liable for £134m of debts, with a priceless collection at risk. How can this be?”

The museum has not gone bankrupt, but it has gone into administration, because the Pension Protection Fund has made a claim on every penny of its assets.

The trustees of the museum believe that the museum’s collection is held in special trust and should not be available to pay that debt.

Therefore the administrator, together with the trustees of the museum, are preparing to make an application to court to clarify the status of the collection.

Due processes are being taken to establish what assets are potentially protected including those of Wedgwood.

The Charity Commission was asked to provide a view on whether the collection is held in permanent endowment or whether it is part of the charity’s corporate property, which is available to creditors.

It reached the conclusion that the museum's collection was not protected.

The museum and the administrators now plan to make a formal application to court by the end of November.

Sir Neil Cossons, chairman of the Royal College of Art said: “If the court case goes against the museum it will not only be catastrophic for one of the finest museums in the country but blow a hole through all our assumptions about the inalienability of collections held by trusts.”

Tweet