No you can't touch it until you're 55. The only good thing at the moment is that you have plenty of time before retiring for the value of your pension fund to rise and for performance to improve. However, this may be an appropriate time for you to decide that your future retirement income needs to be spread across more than one basket, and the other option for you is to start building up some cash ISAs, putting as much as you can in them every year up to the �3600 p.a. allowance, as as you can draw income from these at any age. Income from pension schemes is taxed. Income taken from ISAs is not taxable.