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High street retailer WH Smith has announced plans to close its final salary pension scheme due to spiralling costs.

The proposed move, which must be approved by both members and trustees, will affect workers at WH Smith high street stores and those at the demerged newspaper distribution firm Smiths News.

WH Smith says that 11 per cent of its workforce is enrolled in the final salary scheme, with the aim to bring these employees into the cheaper, simpler schemes of which the majority of workers are members.

In 1995 WH Smith became one of the country's first major companies to deny new hires from joining its final salary pension fund.

The firm today insisted that it had contributed £282 million into the fund since 2003 and plans to pay £10 million annually up until 2012 to rectify the existing deficit of £41 million.

A company spokesman said that WH Smith "has an obligation to its current and future pensioners to ensure the health of the scheme does not deteriorate again".

If and when the pension scheme is closed, the 10,900 deferred pensioners who have already left WH Smith and the 5,100 pensioners and spouses who currently draw their pensions will remain unaffected.

Other companies have struggled with pension plan deficits in recent years, with pest control firm Rentokil also moving workers onto cheaper schemes, while British Airways has a deficit of more than £2 billion despite closing the fund off to new hires.