MORE than one in ten complaints to the Pensions Ombudsman are over payments for sickness, a report revealed yesterday.

In his annual report, the pensions ombudsman, Dr Julian Farrand, said disputes over ill-health benefits were the most common cause for complaints, accounting for 13 per cent of all cases investigated.

Tony King, casework director for the ombudsman, said the main reason for the high number of complaints was that trustees had to use their judgment to decide whether an employee was unfit to continue working, or just unfit to continue in their present occupation.

Other common areas of dispute were over the way in which benefits were calculated, the winding up of pension schemes, and early retirement pensions.

During the financial year of 2000/2001, Dr Farrand received 3,215 new inquiries of which he investigated 911. The majority of rejected cases were referred to other bodies, such as the pensions advisory service Opas.

Mr King said that the number of inquiries had remained broadly similar for a number of years, and was fairly small given that there were 22 million people in pension schemes who could lodge a complaint.

Dr Farrand said: "Considering the tiny proportion of those able to come to me who actually do, let alone the even smaller number whose complaints have any substance, there is apparently not much administratively amiss within pension schemes generally.