I can only talk from my own experience. I was transferred from BT to HP under Tupe in 2004. BT had a final salary scheme and HP a money purchase scheme. Tupe does not cover pensions, and essentially we had the option of freezing our BT pension under the terms then on offer, which meant that it was unavailable until age 60, and we joined the HP scheme, albeit on slightly better terms which were negotiated by our union. Since then I believe that recent goverment legislation means that you can take your pension from age 55, and a number of people who were included in our transfer have since taken the BT pension at age 58 or 59. I suspect it depends on the terms of the scheme you are leaving at the time of transfer. We did of course have the option of transferring all our pension to HP, but that would have been bonkers, since the BT scheme was index linked and effectively gauranteed by the goverment, and nobody did as far as I can recollect.