Cumbria Pensions Committee Tuesday, 15th September, 2020

Following the sad death of Councillor Laurence Fisher, I have been appointed to replace him on Cumbria Pensions Committee, and the first meeting I am due to attend is scheduled to take place this Tuesday, 15th September 2020, at 9.15 am.

I've had the odd sarky comment posted when I have referred in the past to how long meetings lasted or how thick the agenda is. Well, this is one of the heaviest - in both literal and other senses of that word - I have ever seen, it has 565 pages and the paper copies are more than an inch thick. This understates the amount of material produced for the meeting, as when I started working through the hard copy I found there are one or two documents which were not sent out in paper form to members of the committee and which have to be read online. 

However, the length of the agenda document and the substantial time which the meeting is expected to take are entirely justified. 

This meeting will consider the annual report and the audit report for the local government pension scheme for Cumbria.

As the names of the scheme and the committee imply, the pensions scheme for which the committee provides oversight does not just cover the county council's present and former employees but those of the six district councils in Cumbria and a significant number of other local public service organisations including many of the schools and other educational establishments and the parish and town councils in the county. 

The committee's work covers the pensions of 58,396 people: 16,989 current employees as at 31st March 2020, 24,420 former employees who have left the organisations concerned but not yet retired and will be eligible to claim pensions from the Cumbria Local Government Pension Scheme when they do, and 16,987 current pensioners. The investment assets of the scheme pension fund were worth more than £2.5 billion on 31st March 2020.

The agenda and most of the supporting documents for the meeting can be found on the CCC website here along with a link to watch the meeting. I say "most" because a few of the documents are restricted for legitimate reasons under paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Say "No!" if they ask you can they invest that 2bn in a sure fire coal mine off St Bees.
8:03 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
There is no such proposal on tomorrow's agenda.
7:44 pm
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