A company appealed against its Pension Protection Fund (PPF) levy on the grounds that the D&B failure score for a subsidiary company in Luxembourg was not accurate. The PPF Ombudsman agreed that the failure score was not accurate and ordered the PPF to recalculate the levy.
The PPF appealed – and the High Court has upheld its appeal. The question considered by the High Court was whose responsibility it is to ensure that all relevant information has been taken into account by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) when calculating the failure score: is it up to the company to provide up-to-date financial information to D&B or is it D&B’s responsibility to ensure that it has taken account of all relevant financial information that is in the public domain?
The High Court determined that the company bears this burden and should have taken proactive steps to ensure that D&B was in possession of all relevant information.
Comment
This case means that companies will no longer be able to rely on an appeal, after issue of the levy invoice, to correct an inaccuracy in their failure score. Instead they will have to check their failure score in advance, ensuring that D&B’s calculations have taken all relevant information into consideration.