IN BRIEF News
to list the site as suitable for the next generation of plants. Wylfa was confirmed among eight sites around the UK, all adjacent to existing nuclear sites, deemed suitable for new power stations by 2025. Horizon Nuclear Power said its plans could create hundreds of jobs. But an anti-nuclear campaigner said the case in favour of Wylfa was “weak”.
Councils labelled ‘complacent’ Local Government Minister Carl Sargeant launched an assault on “complacency, under-performance and senseless bureaucracy” in councils as he vowed to make them work together more. Sargeant used his speech at the Welsh Local Government Association’s annual conference in Swansea to call for much more collaboration between local authorities with joint appointments being the first step. The senior staffing structure of Wales’s 22 councils was unsustainable and outdated, he said.
Local government
Councils ditch national pension fund plan Kerry Lorimer
Local Government Correspondent
A plan to create a single local government pension fund for the whole of Scotland is to be abandoned after it emerged that the expected efficiency savings would not materialise. Councils had been examining proposals to rationalise the 11 funds which make up the Local Government Pension Scheme, the largest public sector pension scheme in Scotland with over 450,000 members. A pathfinder project had suggested that administrative savings of £11-13m a year could be made by merging the funds because of economies in benefits
administration and investment management fees. Te risks faced by smaller funds, which rely on a smaller number of staff, would also be lessened, it found. Te LGPS has come under increasing pressure over the last five years, with employer contributions rising by 25 per cent in real terms to £836m a year. Auditors warned earlier this year that reform, including a greater contribution from employees, was needed for the scheme to assure its sustainability. However, detailed work undertaken by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has suggested that the rationalisation of existing funds would not deliver the level of savings anticipated by the pathfinder and could increase the risk faced by scheme members.
Kevin Keenan, COSLA finance spokesperson, said the creation of a single fund was now “extremely unlikely”. “While some of the smaller funds may volunteer to move together, there will still be a number of funds operating across Scotland,” he said. Te main reason was that the likely level of efficiencies had been overestimated. “Te report…suggests the savings originally thought about were unachievable,” he said. Consolidation of existing funds could also expose scheme members to greater risk. “If you only had one fund and a major part of that fund went down, there would be a real issue over how best to meet commitments to pensioners,” he said.
Full story see page 29
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland’s National Academy, with a Fellowship of 1500 men and women who are internationally renowned in areas such as science, the arts, humanities, business and public administration. The RSE offers expert advice to the Scottish Government and Parliament, awards Research and Enterprise Fellowships and promotes the advancement of useful knowledge in Scotland through lectures and public outreach.
In recent months the RSE has produced advice to the Scottish Government and Parliament on issues including: Digital Scotland; Facing up to Climate Change; the Teaching of History in Schools; the Future of Higher Education in Scotland; and Agricultural Support.
For further information please contact Bristow Muldoon, Head of Policy Advice at
bmuldoon@royalsoced.org.uk or visit the RSE website,
www.royalsoced.org.uk
10 Holyrood 27 June 2011
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