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One of FTAV’s biggest assets is its rare readers. I am not satisfied with the thousands of words about early membership in the reform of the local government pension committee. Some wanted more details on the scope of this new influence, what this means for the label Richard Tice (the assistant leader) “waking investments.”
All of our answers were deeply buried in the Dataviz of the original work. But certainly extracting those answers included considerable mouse hovering and hand spreadsheets. Now let’s take a different tilt.
The reforms gained control of the 10 councils on May 1st. But as we wrote on Tuesday:
Controlling some councils is mostly converted into control of pension funds, while others may be giving a single seat to the pension committee.
As anyone who sat on a decision committee knows, a single seat has great power. A largely oppositional voice is sufficient to change the dynamics of the group, especially when someone who may be holding publicly broadcasting differences of opinion with other committees. By framing reservations about decisions using the right language, it’s not difficult for someone to create their own equivalents to lookback options.
But does reform currently have only one seat on 10 pension committees?
no. They believe their election profits will lead to some representatives of the Pension Committee of the 18 Local Government Pension Plans, which oversee more than £100 million.
It also estimates that it will have a majority control of the Pension Commission with four administrative authorities overseeing £29.2 billion. And they appear to have multiples controlled by five more administrative authorities that oversee £25.4 billion.
Here’s how estimates across the council that held the election this month will collapse. (NB, West Northamptonshire and North Northamptonshire were grouped together.
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To reach these estimates, we examined the governance compliance statements of LGPS funds associated with each council. These have either gone to the councillors where the number of seats on the Pension Committee is elected, or set out how many seats each council will acquire for the Multi-County Fund, votes, etc.
For example, despite reforms gaining two-thirds of seats and overall control of Doncaster Council, Doncaster is just one of four councils that will gather at the £11 billion South Yorkshire Pension Authority. Doncaster will win three seats on the Pension Committee. Barnsley and Rotherham each win two seats, while Sheffield win five.
So, after winning two-thirds of Doncaster’s council seats, Reform Britain will be asked to provide two elected councillors to South Yorkshire’s 12-year pension committee. There is no direct control, but the voice of the table.
The Lincolnshire County Council, which has been reversed from conservatives to British reform, is another kettle of fish. The Lincolnshire Pension Fund had assets of over £3.4 billion as of March 2024. Its management authority is Lincolnshire County Council. And the Council’s constitution gives 12 pension committees eight seats. Reform Britain takes these five in accordance with the Local Government and Housing Act of 1989, which requires a political balance across the committee to reflect the balance of elections.
Here’s how the fund’s annual report split is:
Why doesn’t the council have all 12 seats? Partly because Lincolnshire County Council is not the only employer of the Lincolnshire Pension Fund.
There is a risk of causing PTSD among survivors of long reads earlier this year. This culminated in a study of funding positions of 787 different employers in the West Midlands pension fund. The LGPS Fund is a multi-employer fund. Councils are probably always the largest employer, but not the only employer.
In Lincolnshire’s case, the council won less than a third of the fund’s contributions last year. This is an appropriate representation for claims against the fund. Who is the other person? Further colleges of education, academy schools, housing associations, private sector contractors – all kinds.
The chart below shows how successful elections will be converted to pension committee representatives. The size of each bubble indicates the size of assets supervised by each administrative authority associated with each council.
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Even reforming the UK’s modest election status in places like Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire shows they have gained representation on the pension table.
Let’s make this a completely simple line chart.
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Did you say it’s easy? That’s probably still worth explaining.
This line shows total LGPS assets affected by reform levels of UK Pension Commission representatives. Therefore, if you want to know the number of assets overseen by the LGPS fund, which has a pension committee made up of at least 50% of the UK councillors, you can go to the 50% mark on the X-axis and find the answer: £29.2 billion. Each step is a different LGPS fund, and you can hover over the mouse to see what it is, how big it is, and more.
For a while, I don’t know what this actually means. But we keep an eye on all activities.
