A FORMER employee of TI New World has received £32,000 in compensation over mis-sold pension plans.

Anthony Cartledge was working at the Latchford firm in the 1990s when it was taken over by Italian firm Merloni.

The company began shedding jobs, offering voluntary redundancy to hundreds of workers and pushing through compulsory cuts.

As the pensions market was de-regulated, so many private alternatives were offered to staff.

A now-defunct IFA, Grange Financial, convinced Union officials at the national Union of Domestic Applicance Workers (NUDA) to advise their members on a mass pension transfer.

Anthony Cartledge said: "I wasn’t given a choice by the NUDA. They told me I had to transfer. I was in my 20s. I didn’t know the ins and outs of the pension system and I took their advice in good faith.

"The IFA told us we’d be much better off, but I lost tens of thousands of pounds – a lot more than my compensation pay-out.

"I have friends who stayed in the TI scheme who received over £100,000. It’s sickening.

"I thought getting my money back would be a long shot, but it was relatively straightforward. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got friends and co-workers who are still out of pocket by tens of thousands of pounds", Mr Cartledge said.

Solicitors are recovering substantial compensatory pay-out on behalf of former industrial workers who entrusted their nest eggs to private pension companies, only to find out that promises of bumper pay-outs were more fiction than fact.

A spokesman for Corrie's Solicitors said "Both state and private sector workers were enrolled in generous pension schemes laden with guarantees, offering financial stability throughout what were often tumultuous economic times.

"Warrington’s nightmare began in the 1990s, somewhat later than the general national downturn in the 1980s, when privatisation and unemployment devastated traditional industries and manufacturing across the UK.

"Sales reps descended upon Warrington, convincing people to transfer their pensions into private schemes, promising returns far beyond what their current pensions would offer.

"Financial advisers worked their way into staff canteens, pubs and employee meetings. Pension firms shouted from the rooftops about double-digit inflation, producing all manner of graphs and statistics to back up their dubious claims."

After the mis-selling was exposed in the 1990s, the Securities Investment Board (now the Financial Conduct Authority) reached out to workers and offered compensation for the mis-sold pensions.

But not everyone was contacted and some people were missed due to moving or admin errors.