Chancellor John Healey should use the Autumn Budget to reassure millions of workers that the government remains committed to making retirement saving attractive and accessible, advisers have warned, amid concerns that a growing proportion of the workforce is failing to put enough aside for later life.
Blick Rothenberg said ministers should use the October Budget to address what it described as widespread undersaving in workplace and personal pensions, as the cost of providing an adequate retirement income rises and pressure grows on the state pension.
Tomm Adams, a partner at the audit, tax and business advisory firm, said: “The Chancellor, John Healey needs to re-affirm the Government’s commitment to making it easy and attractive for today’s working population to save for tomorrow’s retirement. The Autumn Budget should include policy that tackles workplace and personal pension undersaving given the lack of adequacy, increasing cost and unsustainability of the state pension under the triple lock.”
The warning comes as questions mount over whether current pension arrangements will provide sufficient income for future retirees.
Adams added: “Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show the state pension and mandatory auto enrolment together only provide 44.7% of the average final salary in the UK – far behind the EU’s average of 54.5%. Policy that encourages people to save in their workplace and personal pensions would help to shore up their retirement savings.”
The OECD figures highlight the gap between the income provided by mandatory pension arrangements and the earnings workers may have become accustomed to during their careers.
Blick Rothenberg also called for greater certainty around pension tax incentives, arguing that repeated changes or speculation could discourage workers from increasing their contributions.
Tomm said: “Encouraging saving requires consistency in approach and messaging to pensions savings tax relief – there must not be a continued deconstruction of incentives that help people to provide for their own future. The decision to cap salary sacrifice contributions at £2,000 from April 2029 announced in the 2025 Autumn Budget disincentivises younger and lower-paid workers from saving as they tend to pay higher marginal rates of National Insurance – the cap should be reduced or removed in the upcoming 2026 Budget.”
The firm said the issue was particularly pressing for younger and lower-paid workers, who could have decades of retirement saving ahead of them but may have less capacity to absorb changes to the incentives attached to pension contributions.
The scale of the challenge is underlined by research cited by the firm from the Pensions Commission report, Pensions 2050: Evidence and Future Priorities.
Adams said: “According to the Pensions Commission report, ‘Pensions 2050: Evidence and Future Priorities’ around 43% of the working-age population (15 million people) are undersaving for their retirement. With the share of people over the age of 65 projected to reach 28% by 2075, this is an issue that urgently needs to be addressed.”
The demographic shift towards an older population adds pressure to both private savings and the public finances. A larger proportion of retirees could mean greater demands on the state pension at the same time as the working-age population supporting it grows relatively more slowly.
For pension savers, however, Adams said uncertainty itself could become a problem if speculation about potential tax changes encourages people to make decisions before the government has announced its policy.
Tomm said: “We also cannot have months of speculation pre-Autumn Budget on possible pension tax changes. In the run-up to the October 2025 Budget, speculation drove people to withdraw needlessly, with some investment platforms showing a 33% surge in lump sum access requests in September 2025. This left many vulnerable to worse retirement outcomes overall as they pulled money out of their pensions that they could not put back in.”
The warning reflects a broader tension confronting policymakers: encouraging people to save more for retirement while maintaining a tax system that is affordable for the Treasury.
Pension tax relief has repeatedly attracted political scrutiny because of its cost to the Exchequer, while changes to salary sacrifice arrangements can affect the incentives employers and employees face when deciding how much to contribute.
Blick Rothenberg’s argument is that policy stability should form part of the government’s strategy for addressing the long-term retirement savings gap.
With millions of workers potentially facing inadequate retirement incomes and the proportion of older people expected to increase substantially over coming decades, the decisions made in the Autumn Budget could shape not only household finances but the future balance between private pension saving and state support.
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