TRUSTEES of a failed company pension scheme which has left more than 1,250 people facing financial heartache have today broken their silence for the first time.

They revealed that the price of saving the pensions of hundreds of Hampshire people would have been £1.5m a year for ten years.

That is an average of about £1,200 per person per year.

Despite putting in £2.4m last year, it was more than American-owned APW Electronics, whose factory at Chandler's Ford is pictured above, was able to pay and so the scheme was wound up.

In a highly unusual move, the pension fund's trustees released a statement to the Daily Echo outlining the reasons why the fund had to be wound up in the High Court.

The legal step prevented APW Electronics from having to go into insolvency. But, it meant that 1,259 workers and retired pensioners of APW Electronics lost up to 80 per cent of the value of their pension.

The pensions controversy - des-cribed by politicians and unions as a scandal - means people expecting to have a pension of £20,000 a year face having to get by on just £4,000.

The five trustees, headed by chairman Brian Gay, have come under fire from furious scheme members for not raising the alarm sooner, as reported in yesterday's Daily Echo.

It emerged today that they knew as early as March this year that there was a serious problem with the fund and they flagged it up with APW bosses.

It was calculated that the scheme needed APW to pay in £1.5m a year to get back within its legal obligations inside ten years.

It was more than APW could afford and the trustees' statement says they were left in "no doubt" that if the scheme was not wound up APW would forced into administration "immediately".

Trustees say they were effectively barred from telling members about the crisis because of a legal secrecy clause imposed upon them. But they claim that thanks to their intervention APW made a "substantially increased" final payment into the fund of £2.3m. On being wound up the fund had a £55m black hole.

David Gallitano, the US-based chief executive of APW Electronics, declined to talk to the Daily Echo, referred calls to his UK representative, who also made no comment.

A private company, APW Ltd, based in Wisconsin USA, has never made its financial results public.