‘Pension fund one of country’s worst’

FOR the second year running, our local government pension fund has been criticised in a national report for management and overhead costs.

Last year’s report highlighted that for ‘ costs per member’ Cheshire Pension Fund were the worst of all 89 funds in England.

CPF costs per member were £530, while those of West Yorkshire were just £38, a staggering 19 times higher.

Now the latest 2016 think-tank report lists yo-yo costs reported by our local auditors to the government.

Cheshire went up in 2015 by 80%, then down in 2016 by 45%, but still among the worst in the country.

The 2016 report says that ‘ the inconsistency of the reported data shows that many funds are in a state of administrative and governance disarray’.

Cheshire Pension Fund represents our councils, housing associations, some schools and colleges, and a few other public bodies.

It covers 86,000 members in 220 employers.

The fund is one of the largest in England valued at £4.4bn.

The report shows a national overreliance on external ‘experts’ and highlights how they have failed to outguess the stock markets, known as ‘active investing’.

Nationally pensions funds paid expert advisers £8bn in fees in the last 10 years,

But it would have been better if the 89 funds had just followed standard indexes, known as ‘passive investing’.

The hard-hitting criticisms in the report say that pension trustees are in awe of the highly paid advisers, consultants, and so-called experts.

Their unjustified fees become additional costs, because they are not ‘performance related’.

Funds do not challenge these London fat cats.

The report says council pension funds show a ‘dangerous cocktail of incompetent amateurism, indifference, inertia, and an abject lack of curiosity’.

Here only some investments can be seen on the website and reports.

All other investments by advisers on behalf of Cheshire Pension Fund are not openly available, they have been classed as commercially confidential.

We think that our fund should invest locally in Halton area for our local economy.

For example the Annual Report lists office and retail blocks all over the UK, but not Cheshire, Warrington or Halton.

Why is that sensible? Does the South East really need our pension funds?

What about some confidence in the Northern Powerhouse?

We invest without regard to the wellbeing and future in Halton, as we chase short term profits in companies such as Wonga, gambling, tobacco, fracking, and zero-hours employers.

CPF also has large investments in the biggest companies infamously not paying full UK Corporation Tax on UK trade, such as Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc.

And this Centre For Policy Studies report confirms that we keep failing to manage fund overheads properly