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About the trustees

The Trustee of the Scheme is a company, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Pension Trust Ltd. This is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and exists only for the purpose of acting as sole corporate trustee of the Scheme.

The Trustee company acts through its Board of Directors. The directors are referred to as ‘the Trustee Directors’ and the Board of Directors as ‘the Trustee Board’. There are eleven Trustee Directors:

• four are appointed by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ;
• four are appointed by Scheme members. Three of these are elected by the active members and those deferred members employed by participating employers. One is elected by the pensioners. All four serve for six years;
• three are independent Trustee Directors, appointed by other Trustee Directors with the agreement of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Board.

There is a more detailed Governance Statement available here.

The Trustee is responsible for stewardship of the Scheme’s assets. Its main objective is to ensure that all beneficiaries receive the benefits to which they are entitled under the Trust Deed and Rules.

Find out who the Trustees are and read their biographies below.

The fund

Pension contributions are paid into a trust fund and invested by the Trustee to produce income from which benefits are paid. The Fund is separate from the finances of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and participating employers. It is used to provide benefits for the Scheme’s members and their dependants.

The Scheme is registered for tax purposes with HM Revenue & Customs.

Trust Deed and Rules 

The Trustees administer the Scheme and pay benefits in accordance with the Trust Deed and Rules. You can get a copy from the documents page.

Annual Report

Copies are available from the documents page.

Where can I get help?

You can find lots of help and advice in our help section.

Trustee Biographies

Catherine Claydon

Catherine is a Non-Executive Director of the new British Steel Pension Scheme. Previous appointments have included Deputy Chair of the BT Pension Scheme Trustees Limited, independent member of the Unilever UK Pension Fund Investment Committee and Non Executive Directorships at Barclays UK Retirement Fund (Chair of Investment Advisory Group), Dunedin Income Growth Investment Trust (Senior Independent Director), the London Metal Exchange Limited, Hermes Fund Managers Ltd and the Witan Investment Trust (Chairman Remuneration Committee).

Catherine Claydon’s professional background includes more than 20 years’ experience in investment banking in the UK, with 15 years spent at Goldman Sachs, latterly as a Managing Director in the Pension Advisory Group. Her background included multi-asset class derivatives and commodities, where she was the Managing Director responsible for the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.

Catherine is a PMI accredited professional Trustee.

Ben Cryer

Ben Cryer is a Principal Technical Operator working for News and regional TV in Leeds. He started his career at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in 2000 as a Radio and TV Journalist but switched to camerawork and editing documentaries. In that time, he's filmed in several countries including Kosovo, Argentina, and across Europe and covered major news and sporting events. Ben is also a Trade Union representative for BECTU and sits on the National Joint Council negotiating with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ at a national level. He also sits on the Governance committee for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Lifeplan pension.

Emma Osborne

Emma Osborne has a number of non-executive and trustee roles, including as a trustee at the People’s Pension master trust and the Church of England pension schemes. Her previous executive role was mainly in institutional investment management and included being head of quantitative investment management and derivatives at Credit Suisse Asset Management and Chief Investment Officer for the international assets of the Chubb Corporation, a US insurance company, where she was also chair of the UK company’s pension scheme. Emma is a PMI accredited professional Trustee.

Leslie Huss-Smickler

Leslie has been working in the pensions industry for most of his working life; 16 years of which were with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. He was formerly the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Pensions Manager and left in 1994 to become the Pensions Policy Manager at BT where he stayed until 2010. He subsequently joined Wealth at work as Head of Retirement Services and retired in 2020.

He is a member of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Pensioners Association and is on its governing committee.

Leslie qualified as a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute (FCII) and a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute (FPMI).

Martyn Freeman

As Chief Operating Officer of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Studios, Martyn is responsible for overseeing the company’s legal and business affairs, global operations, compliance and risk, in addition to technology, transformation and property.

Appointed Chief Operating Officer in December 2021, Martyn was previously General Counsel for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Studios, having held the role for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Worldwide since 2011. Prior to this he led ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Worldwide's Legal and Business Affairs teams, as Group Head and then Director. Martyn has also worked in a variety of roles across the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, including as Head of Business Affairs, Radio & Music, Factual & Learning and News.

David Jordan

David is the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Director, Editorial Policy & Standards. He is responsible for compiling the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Editorial Guidelines and manages the editorial policy team as well as the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s complaints system and the Pronunciation Unit. David joined the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in 1988 to work on political and current affairs programmes for television and radio and edited On The Record, Panorama, The Westminster Hour and The Week in Westminster.  He has also been the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Chief Adviser, Politics.   

David is Secretart General of Public Broadcasters’ International, the Executive Board of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen.

Peter Johnston

Peter Johnston was appointed Director Editorial Complaints and Reviews in April 2023, following on from his role in leading the implementation of the Serota Review/DG Impartiality plan. Prior to that he had been Director of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Northern Ireland since 2006 with overall editorial and managerial responsibility for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in Northern Ireland. Peter joined ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Northern Ireland in 1994 working in audience research and has held roles as Head of Marketing and Development, Head of New Media for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Nations and Regions, and Head of Broadcasting.

Peter sat on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Nations Board and on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Northern Ireland Committee, which is responsible for advising the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Board on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s performance and services for audiences in Northern Ireland, and for overseeing the public engagement strategy. He also sat on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Digital Leadership Group representing the Nations Division and attends the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Board.

Kristina Block

Kristina Block is the Commissioning Editor for World News Content and a deputy to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Foreign Editor. She is responsible for commissioning high impact, original content from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News teams around the world as well as planning news coverage and deployments on international stories. She started her ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ career in global business programmes, oversaw the planning for the Rio Olympics as well as other major events, before leading the planning teams for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World News and World Service Radio. Prior to joining the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in 2006 Kristina was a business correspondent and news editor for international news channel DW-TV in her native Germany.

Shirley Cameron

Shirley Cameron is a Chartered Accountant and Treasurer and is currently Director of Revenue and Customer Management at the British Broadcasting Corporation where she leads the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Licence Fee Collection activities.

In a 28 year career at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, Shirley has held a wide range of finance, project and management roles across all divisions of the organisation including 7 years as ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Group Financial Controller.

She completed her Chartered Accountancy training with KPMG in London before a secondment to the firm’s Melbourne office. Her professional experience covers financial accounting, treasury, audit, tax, mergers & acquisitions and corporate governance.

Shirley is Deputy Chair of the Board of Governors at the University of West London, a Trustee of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Media Action and Honorary Treasurer of the Hansard Society.

Hannah Sander

Hannah Sander is a Commissioning Executive at Radio 4, overseeing Factual programmes on topics including economics, history and current affairs. For two years she sat on multiple ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ senior leadership committees preparing large-scale plans for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s WWI Centenary. She spent over a decade in production at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Audio, producing programmes for Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service.

Bridget Houghton

Bridget is an independent professional trustee with roles as a non-executive trustee director for the John Lewis Partnership Trust for Pensions and the Barclays Bank UK Retirement Fund. Her previous executive roles have given her extensive experience in the pensions industry. She worked for Barclays for 15 years, until 2023, as Global Head of Pensions and CEO to the UK pension funds. Prior to this she had roles in pensions management, HR and actuarial consultancy with JPMorgan and Mercer. She is a qualified actuary and a PMI Accredited Professional Trustee.