13 million small pension pots to be merged — but not until 2030

What was published

On 15 September 2026 the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) opened a consultation called “Small Pots: a pathway for consolidation”. It closes at 11:59pm on 17 November 2026. It proposes moving about 13 million forgotten pension pots of £1,000 or less into a small number of approved schemes automatically — and the government’s own roadmap does not have consolidation starting until April 2030.

It sets out how to build the machinery for something the Pension Schemes Act 2026, which became law on 29 April 2026, already allows: moving tiny, dormant workplace pots into approved “default consolidator” schemes, without the saver doing anything.

Which pots

A pot is in scope if it is worth £1,000 or less, sits in an automatic-enrolment workplace pension in a charge-capped default fund, was created since automatic enrolment began, carries no guarantees, and has had no contributions paid into it for at least 12 months. The £1,000 limit is to be kept under review.

There are about 13 million of them, and the number grows by roughly a million a year. The consultation puts the cost of administering them at £240 million a year, which ultimately comes out of members’ money.

The saver keeps two controls. You can choose which consolidator your pot goes to, or you can opt out of consolidation altogether. If you do neither, the delivery group’s recommendation is that your pot follows the largest pot you already hold with an authorised consolidator.

The date people will get wrong

April 2030. Nothing moves this year, and nothing moves next year. A consultation closing in November 2026 is the start of building the system, not the start of using it — and the government calls its own timings indicative and subject to change.

Two more things are worth being clear about.

• This is defined contribution money — a pot with a balance in it. The NHS Pension Scheme and the Local Government Pension Scheme are defined benefit: both work your pension out from your pay and your service, there is no pot to merge, and they are not in this.
• It does not find pots you have lost track of. It acts on pots the industry can already identify, matched on name, date of birth and National Insurance number through a data platform being built for the purpose.

Why it matters before 2030

A pot of £1,000 or less pays the same fixed administration charges as a much larger one, and those charges are why a small dormant pot can shrink rather than grow. The government puts the average deferred small pot at around £350. Anyone who has had several short jobs since automatic enrolment started in 2012 — a hospital bank contract, a summer in retail, agency shifts between permanent posts — may have three or four without thinking of them as pensions at all.

You can trace them now rather than waiting. GOV.UK’s Find pension contact details service, also known as the Pension Tracing Service, will give you a scheme’s contact details from an old employer’s name. It will not tell you whether you have a pension there or what it is worth — the scheme itself gives you the balance and the charges. What follows from that depends on facts this article cannot see: the charges on each pot, whether any of them carries a guarantee worth keeping, and whether moving one would cost you anything.

If you also pay into the NHS scheme, NHS pension contributions shows what comes out of your pay each month and the tier it is charged at.

Where these figures come from

• DWP launches consultation on implementing small pots default consolidator solution — Professional Pensions
• Government response to ending the proliferation of deferred small pots — GOV.UK
• Small Pots Delivery Group Report — GOV.UK
• DWP launches consultation on small pots consolidation — Corporate Adviser

Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.