The crisis suffered by thousands of Midlanders who lost their pensions is unlikely to be repeated according to the Government, which has launched a new pension fund aimed at those whose firms go bust.
The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) will come into effect on April 6, financed by a levy on occupational schemes which will raise hundreds of millions of pounds.
A Pensions Regulator will also start work officially on the same day, providing a double boost for workers, said Work and Pensions Secretary Alan Johnson.
"For over ten million people in occupational pensions in Britain the new Pension Protection Fund and regulator will provide a new level of security for pensions."
The fund is designed to avoid the situations that workers from firms such as United Engineering Forgings in Bromsgrove and Kalamazoo in Birmingham faced when their companies went into liquidation.
Last month it was announced that workers who had lost pensions through company bankruptcy could receive up to 80 per cent of the payments they would have been entitled to from a Government fund.
However, only those who were within three years of their scheme pension age on May 14 2004 were deemed eligible.
Richard Meek, a consultant for the Birmingham office of independent financial advisors Punter Southall, said that the PPF would provide a "halfway house" to protect company pension-holders.
He said: "The new fund, combined with new legislation making it harder for companies to walk away from their pensions schemes, should mean the horror stories of the past are unlikely to return.
"However, the level of compensation the PPF can provide will not be comparable to what a worker would have received with a full pension.
"It is, however, better than nothing at all."
