The limit on your yearly contributions to ALL registered pension schemes is your earnings in any tax year up to £215,000. If you're not earning but can contribute to a pension, the maximum you can contribute in each year is £2,808 (made up to £3,600 with basic rate tax relief).

This means that you can top up your occupational pension with AVCs, stakeholder and personal pensions up to the yearly limit and the earnings restriction of £30,000 a year for stakeholder pensions is abolished. So you can contribute to a stakeholder or personal pension in addition to your occupational pension.

There is also a lifetime allowance limiting how much you can accumulate (free of income tax) in all the pension funds you have built up. In 2006/07 the lifetime allowance is £1.5 million. The allowance will be increased each year in line with inflation.

Salary-related pension scheme benefits will be given a value which will count towards the £1.5 million lifetime allowance. You will have to pay tax on any excess over the £1.5m allowance.

If you wish, you can take a maximum of one quarter of ALL the pension funds you have built up (including AVCs and FSAVCs) up to the lifetime allowance of £1.5mn, as a tax-free lump sum.

The old limits for stakeholder and personal pensions are abolished from 6 April 2006.