POLICE are looking into the pension scheme at an East Lancashire engineering works - as employees' top-up contributions are delayed after the company hits a cash-flow problem.

But, encouragingly, the firm - involved in a management buy-out recently and needing to transfer pension money from an old fund to a new one - is quite open about the problem. Administration difficulties and delay appear to be as much part of the matter as the cash-flow situation holding up the payments of contributions.

But there's one golden rule that firms should remember about pension cash - that it is not theirs, but that of their workers.

Essentially, the funds are composed of delayed wages.

And they are not there to be dipped into by companies even in emergencies.

They are the workers' lifeboats, not the firms'.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.