Investors for Purpose comment on the latest fiduciary duty update

On 13 July 2026, the Department for Work and Pensions published its updated Workplace pensions: an updated roadmap report, which confirms the sequencing of a hugely ambitious reform programme. This covers scale, value for money, contractual override, guided retirement and the defined benefit surplus regime. Within it sits a welcome, if brief, commitment: guidance on trustees’ fiduciary duties in relation to investment decision-making, with consultation planned for summer 2026, and final guidance due between January and March 2027.

We’re pleased to see this timeline confirmed, not least because it puts a government deadline behind work that is already well underway. Since March 2026, a Technical Working Group has been meeting to help shape this guidance, chaired by Sir Robin Knowles, the High Court judge who previously led the Financial Markets Law Committee’s widely-respected 2024 paper on fiduciary duty and climate change. That earlier work did a great deal to dispel confusion about what trustees can and cannot properly take into account. Sir Robin’s continued leadership on this next phase gives us real confidence that the guidance will be practical, principled and usable by trustees, rather than merely descriptive. Our CEO, Charlotte O'Leary, is part of this advisory group, and is feeding into conversations.