Agenda item

The Head of Pensions and Treasury introduced the item and the following was highlighted:

·         A good governance project was underway

·         The 95k Exit Cap was introduced and there was a situation with two sets of regulations that were in conflict. The Government had now made the decision to withdraw this and due to the amount of work and hours spent, the Fund would be looking at a request for the refund on the hours spent.

·         The report contained the Lifetime allowance freeze consultation

·         Climate and environmental risk as well as social and governance issues were areas of priority. The Pension Committee would be looking to firm up its position in all these areas. A paper would be presented to the next meeting which firms up processes on what they would look to achieve and how.

It was commented that on the Climate risks issue, the Board knows it’s not the Council’s policy but that of the administering body. This needed to be subtly referenced in written reports. The year ahead was focused on governance with a mini review of the Pension fund taking place. The Pension Advisory Board Good Governance project was also underway and it would be beneficial for a report to be presented to the Board on the impact of that on Croydon’s assessment.

There was a clear recommendation from the Good Governance about having separate conflicts of interest policy and it had proved difficult to get the Pensions Committee to acknowledge the subtleties of this on the administrative body. This must remain an area of close scrutiny for the Board as well as the TPR regulators shift from code of practice 14 to a modular format.

Officers agreed with the points made and would pick this up in the work programme. The Council as well as other Local Authorities had been nonspecific in their approach by declaring a Climate Emergency but not how this would be addressed. The Pension Funds policy will look to be more specific, transparent and measurable.

 A Member asked how much employers and members knew about the minimum pension age consultation and whether it was open to them to comment. Officers advised that they would look into this in further detail and whether if was something they should be notifying employers about.

In response to a question on how closely or aligned the Pension Fund was with the London CIV on the ESG and if there was a drive towards carbon neutral funds. Officers said that the London CIV had yet to publish anything on this although they had a team working on this specifically. The issue was that as this was a London wide project there were 32 members involved which meant there would always be an inherent problem in finding a common ground between the Local Authorities. The main area of concern for the local authorities was not in the product itself but the support and the landscape of investment to ensure that they are not invested in a product of little of no value.

RESOLVED: The Board AGREED to note the contents of the report.