Gauging Reform UK’s pension power

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One of FTAV’s greatest assets is its indefatigable readership. Not satisfied with a couple of thousand words on Reform UK’s incipient membership of local authority pension committees, and what this might mean for what Richard Tice — its deputy leader — labels “woke investments”, some of you wanted even more detail about the extent of this newfound influence.

Our answers were all buried deep in the original piece’s dataviz. But, admittedly, extracting those answers involved a fair bit of mouse-hovering and having a spreadsheet to hand. So let’s take another tilt at it.

Reform won control of ten councils on 1st May. But as we wrote on Tuesday:

Controlling some councils pretty much translates into control of their pension funds, while others give maybe a single seat on the pensions committee — if that.

As anyone who has sat on a decision-making committee knows, there’s significant power in a single seat. A majorly dissenting voice can be enough to change a group’s dynamic, especially if held by someone who might air any disagreements with the rest of the committee in public. By framing reservations around decisions using just the right language it’s not hard for someone to craft themselves the equivalent of a look-back option.

But will Reform now have just a single seat on ten pensions committees?

No. We reckon their electoral gains translate into some representation on the pension committees of 18 different Local Government Pension Scheme administering authorities, collectively overseeing more than £100bn.

Furthermore, we estimate that they will have majority control of the pensions committees in four administering authorities, overseeing £29.2bn. And it looks like they will have a controlling plurality on a further five administering authorities overseeing £25.4bn.

Here’s how our estimates break down across councils that held elections this month. (NB, we’ve grouped together West Northamptonshire and North Northamptonshire into a single Northamptonshire column):

To arrive at these estimates, we took a look at the Governance Compliance Statements of LGPS fund associated with each council. These set out how many seats on the pensions committee go to elected councillors, how many seats each council gets for multi-council funds, who gets to vote, etc.

For example, despite Reform UK winning a stonking two-thirds of the seats and overall control of Doncaster Council, Doncaster is just one of the four councils that club together into the £11bn South Yorkshire Pension Authority. Doncaster gets three seats on its pensions committee. Barnsley and Rotherham get two seats apiece, while Sheffield gets five seats.

So, having won two-thirds of Doncaster’s council seats, Reform UK will be asked to provide two elected councillors to South Yorkshire’s twelve-strong pensions committee. No direct control, but a voice at the table.

Lincolnshire County Council, which flipped from Conservative to Reform UK, is a different kettle of fish. Lincolnshire Pension Fund had just over £3.4bn of assets as of March 2024. Its administering authority is Lincolnshire County Council. And the council’s constitution gives it eight seats on a pensions committee of twelve. Reform UK will take five of these, in accordance with the Local Government and Housing Act of 1989 that requires political balance across committees to reflect electoral balance.

Here’s how they show the split in the fund’s annual report:

Why doesn’t the council have all twelve seats? Partly, it’s because Lincolnshire County Council is not the only employer in the Lincolnshire Pension Fund.

At the risk of triggering PTSD among survivors of our long read earlier this year — which culminated in an examination of the funding position of the 787 different employers in the West Midlands Pension Fund — LGPS funds are multi-employer funds. The council is probably always the largest employer, but not the only one.

In the case of Lincolnshire, the council made less than a third of the fund’s contributions last year — a decent proxy for their claims on the fund. Who are the others? Further education colleges, academy schools, housing associations, private-sector contractors — all sorts.

 The chart below shows the degree to which electoral success translates into pensions committee representation. The size of each bubble denotes the size of assets overseen by each administering authority associated with each council:

It shows that even Reform UK’s modest electoral positions in places like Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire have won them representation at the pensions table.

Let’s bring this altogether in simple line chart:

Did we say simple? It’s probably still worth explaining.

The line shows total LGPS assets influenced by a given level of Reform UK pensions committee representation. So, if you want to know how many assets are overseen by LGPS funds with pension committees whose voting members consist of at least 50 per cent Reform UK councillors, you can go to the 50 per cent mark on the x-axis and find the answer: £29.2bn. Each step is a different LGPS fund and you can hover your mouse over it to see what it is, how large it is, etc.

We won’t know what this will all mean in practical terms for some time. But we’ll be keeping an eye out for any activity.