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Pensions Committee
Thursday, 30th July 2026 at 6:30pm

 

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An agenda has not been published for this meeting.

Thank you everyone.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for being here today.
Everyone, welcome to the pension committee meeting.
My name is Councillor Sili Garmid and I am the chair of the committee.
Please note the following meeting procedures.
This meeting is being held in person.
Committee members and key participants are present in the meeting room.
only the committee members present in meeting room will be able to vote.
Other persons may be also attending remotely.
Committee members and others who have chosen to attend remotely have been advised by the
It may proceed in their absence if I feel it is necessary
I'll remind members at the meeting to only speak to
My direction and to speak clearly
Into their microphone to ensure that their contribution can be properly recorded
Can everyone ensure that
That
Mobile phones are switched off
Please on silent mode before I go any further of what an announcement to make
So before I begin today, I would like to address the council's
Council's repeated efforts to ensure that our pension fund is
is divested from companies complicit in human rights violation.
At the previous full council meeting on 2022 July this year,
we passed a motion building on an earlier motion that was passed in January 2025.
Furthermore, residents have repeatedly called on us to diverse these funds.
And the Council's trade unions represented here today have also been demanding diversement.
Today in my capacity as a chair of the pension committee, together with Councillor Abu Tahleh
Chaudhry as a cabinet member of resources, assets,
and governance, I sent a letter to the head of pension
treasury and corporate director for resources
requesting action on this issue.
I now will invite Councillor Abutalla Chaudhry
to provide further context regarding the information
we have requested.
Our works with residents and over works and an overwhelming majority of our
council are demanding divestment. Furthermore there is a growing number of
council in London that are also moving towards divestment. We must put all our
Energy together to ensure the divestment happens. Thank you. Can I
Thank you chair, thank you committee so very quickly there was a full council meeting last week where this was discussed and I know
Councils here in this committee were present
So essentially what the motion resolved was to request an audit of the funds exposure
So a request that a report be presented to the pensions committee at the October meeting assessing the exposure of council funds to companies
identified on the four mention lists
The second was and this is just for the benefit of committee just just be aware of what was agreed in for Council
updating the investment strategy statement to ensure sufficient time is allocated at the
October pensions committee meeting to review the ISS and
consider amendments proposed by members to reflect the resolutions adopted in
January 25 and July 26 or to convene an extraordinary meeting in early September
dedicated to reviewing the ISS if we don't have enough time at the next
meeting. Then there was something there around member consultation to engage
with trade unions representing to Hamlet staff and pension scheme members and
and report on their views regarding divestment.
And finally, there was a bit about procurement and the activities we do there
that's not really relevant for this committee.
Thank you, Thala.
Is there anyone else on the side, please?
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councillor Chaudry.
I've been in the pensions committee in the last year as well,
and we had a motion very similar to this one that was passed in one of the full councils.
Following that full council and the motion being passed, we brought these attentions
to the pensions committee and requested a detailed breakdown to which we did receive
some information.
Colleagues here from MRSA and other partners were also involved and we've discussed it
in detail, but to my, as a member of the committee, I wasn't satisfied that we have received everything
in detail and I wasn't satisfied that the concerns raised by the council was being heard
by the committee.
And to the benefit of London SIV, who are now more involved, these motions were very
much attached to the employees of the council, as well as the residents, and it matters to
It matters to us as a committee where we were going forward. We want more transparency
So I think I will urge the committee one more time to review these and the deck the deadlines that's been set out
Are met and we received on information on time. That would be my input. Thank you
Thank you chair, I would just like to reiterate the points made by both the councillors prior to me
given the overwhelming support by full council and given the council's legal obligations which I outlined at full council last week
and also given the high interest across the borough.
As Councillor Séad Ahmed stated, I think it's imperative that this is at the top of our agenda and if an EGM is required, that that take place as well.
But thank you for putting that less forward and I think it's of the utmost urgency.
Thank you very much.
Anybody who wants to make a comment, thank you.
We move on.
I will now ask perhaps, should I, yeah, the introduction.
We go through the introduction now.
Please, I ask committee members present to introduce themselves.
Please, can you also state any declaration of interest that you may have in the agenda
item and the nature of the interest? Can I start from my left, please?
Fahanazir, Democratic Services Officer, supporting the Pensions Committee this evening.
I'm Councillor Hassan Mahmood and nothing to do here.
Hi, I'm Councillor Jonathan Persil. I'm unsure if it's necessary or not, but it's not on
the agenda, but given that it's just come up, I draw attention to my existing non -DPI
as a unpaid advisory council member of the Campaign Against Arms Trade.
Good evening, Chair. I'm Thomas French, Assistant Prime Secretary of Unison and the
Union Representative. Not a decoration of interest, but I am also someone on the pension scheme,
so that's my interest. Thank you. I'm Colin Robertson, the independent advisor to the fund.
Steve Turner, Investment Consultant for Mercer.
Sandeep Chandarana, Investment Consultant for Mercer.
Good evening. Jenny Bach. I'm the Chief Investment Officer of the London CIB.
Good evening. Stephanie Ains, Client Relations Manager at London CIB.
John Jones, Independent Chair of the Local Pension Board.
Welcome colleagues and guests, Councillor Abu Choudry, I'm the lead member for finance
assets and governance and nothing to declare.
Hi everyone, I'm Councillor Saeed Ahmad, cabinet member for home building, enhancing council
homes and neighbourhoods and nothing to declare.
Paul Avedo, Head of Pensions and Treasury.
Thank you everyone.
Thank you.
Farhana, do you have any apologies for absence?
Yes Chair, I've been informed about Councillor Belal Uddin and also Councillor Victoria Lupton.
Okay.
We have already done the declaration of interest with the introduction. So I'll move safely into the
next item
item
3 can I invite members to approve the
unrestricted minutes of the meeting held on 9th March
26
Apologise I forgot to include the election of the vice chair
So you need to put, yeah, I didn't put it in your script.
I apologise for that.
Can we do that?
So we need to nominate.
It's our apologies, it's a joint apology.
We are to elect Vice Chair now.
Any nominations?
Proposal?
Chair, I'd like to nominate Councillor Saeed Ahmed.
As Vice Chair.
Any proposal?
I propose Councillor Sarabat as a Vice Chair, yeah.
Second, sorry. Yeah, I second.
Any more proposal nominations?
Okay, so, Councillor Syed Ahmed is the Vice Chair. Thank you very much.
Okay, noted, yep.
Right, okay, can I just move now to agenda item three?
Can I invite members to approve the unrestricted minutes
of the meeting held on 9th of March this year
as an accurate record of proceedings?
Yeah.
Okay move to you at a number
agenda for his petitions
We have five minutes altogether for her. I have have received any petitions. No chair. No petitions received
Five
Can I invite John?
Jones to present his report does the committee have any question or?
Yes, yeah
All right, okay, so yeah, that's been done. All right, okay
John does to present your report. Thank you chair
the board met just over a week ago and
Can sit all the reports that the board considered are on your agenda
This evening and the points I've raised are covered in on pages 17 and 18. I just wanted to highlight
two or three issues
first one in paragraph three and also
Nine in relation to pensions admin those of you who've been on the committee before
Remember the concerns we expressed about backlogs and outstanding work in pensions administration
But I'm pleased to say that the data
Demonstrates there's been a lot of progress here and we really seem to have turned a corner. So
That's some praise and thanks for all the staff in who were dealing with that
Recruitment remains an issue, but I know offices are continuing to address that
So that seems to be an issue that can has been been dealt with a long -standing one as well
Perhaps a more concern though is paragraph 5 on the risk register. You've got this report on your agenda later on
This is an important document in the overall governance of the fund, but it does need to be
Need to be more work done on this and in particular
Identifying mitigations to reduce risks and also the allocation of responsibilities to officers
And you'll have an opportunity to comment on this a bit a bit later on on the agenda
Those are the own particular issues. I wanted to highlight other than the final paragraph
We were advised that the accounts have been completed on
On time for the second year running. So the staff were thanked for their work in respect of that
The second report on the agenda there five one is the report I prepared it forms part of the annual accounts
It's for noting really information. It just covers the work that the board has done over the over the over the year to 25
26
But if anyone's got any questions very happy to to it to deal with those. Thank you
Thank you very much
Mr. Jones for your report
if you don't have any questions, we can move to the
the next agenda.
Now we go, yeah, 5 .1 is pension board.
6 .1, yeah.
Yeah, go to 6 .1.
I'll take this report as being read
and we'll go straight to questions.
Do committee members have any questions,
comments they wish to ask?
Can I ask any comments of committee?
Any questions for members?
Can I ask the the comments on the committee are noted
Can members please note and agree the recommendations on page 25 of
the
Thank you
we move to
Agenda item 6 .2. I'll take this report as being read and we'll go straight to the questions
Do come with you and we have any questions or comments wish to us
Can I ask the
Mmm, come to the committee are noted can members please not the
agree the recommendation on page 37 of the agenda
We move to item
6 .3. Can I invite Paul?
Or do to introduce the report?
Thank you, Chair. In the interest of time, I will just focus on the key points, Chair.
If I can ask you to go to paragraph 3 .16, where you'll find the principles, strategic
risks shown on that page and there's an overview of the draught register
identifying 32 current risks across six categories and then paragraph 3 .19 which
sets out the main themes including some of the matters that will be discussed in
other reports to this committee, so I'm not going to go through them in detail.
But I think the key thing to say, Chair, is that this risk register remains a work in
progress but nearing completion.
And in the interest of time and also to avoid any confusion, officers are asking that instead
of seeking the unqualified approval of the risk register in its published form that a
more suitable revised recommendation would be, and I quote, the committee notes the draught
pension fund risk register and requests that a completed and quality assured version be
presented to its meeting on 1st October 2026 for approval.
Thank you, chair.
Thank you, Paul.
Does the committee have any questions or comments?
Councillor Sane.
Thank you, chair, and thanks, Paul, for that brief intro.
Couple of questions around the principle strategic risks and what we have been provided, I believe,
in pages 51 onwards.
Could you just explain to me, when you say current risk score is 12, is this similar
to the other risk reports that we get around it from my brief around the housing department
where we have a maximum of 15?
And if we were to reg rate this, where would it fall within a reg rating sort of chart?
Is this going to be in the amber section or the red section?
Thank you, Chair. It would be the amber.
So it would be medium.
It would be the medium risk section.
If I can just reiterate that the current risk register
is just going through the final part of the design stage
to reflect the changing regulatory environment.
and I think it's important to point out that there are certain things that have
not been done yet. For example, you will see that all the 32 risks currently
appear to be allocated to the head of pensions and treasury rather than to
appropriate accountable risk owners and you know much of the appendix as well
does not clearly set out you know the completed controls for that mitigation
mitigating actions, action orders and delivery dates.
So, you know, officers are aware of that.
And of course the relationship between
the current risk scores, target scores
and the mitigation needed to reach the target
is currently insufficiently clear.
That's firmly on officers radar.
So all this will be tidied up and then quality checked
and then before it comes back for approval in October.
Thank you, Chair.
Yeah, so.
Thank you, Chair.
Paul, can I request that we have this
in a heat map format as well going forward
as a summary page to understand how many we have
and what progress you're making
because there's significant amount of work
I can see that you need to get done
and in a short space of time.
If you want to fix all this by October,
And I think one thing to note for the committee is that we don't want to come back in October and
Have another list of things that we want to do
We want to see some fruitful actions going in place because there is a lot of
Significant amount and I don't want to go for all of these and each one of them have a lot of impact and a lot
Of reputational damage tied down to it
So I think we just need to make sure that once we do come back in October
We have a heat map in place which shows us where these
previous scoring were and where it's moving to so we want to see a directional
movement in one place rather than the way it's laid out is to separate and
elongated.
Can you decide, Richard?
Yeah, I mean just to say through you, Chair, I think Councillor Armid made some good points.
We've had some conversations about this and the injection of both
with improving the quality and the speed
with which we're doing it.
It is highly likely, I would suggest,
that therefore we will utilise some expertise
to help do this.
One of the things you'll notice in the register
is all of the risks are down to pull.
That isn't gonna work.
That is a risk in its own right.
That needs to be put right very quickly.
We will truncate some of it,
make it more usable for the committee,
but the layout again is not where we expect.
You know, without preempting who we'll use,
we will use some expertise to get it there faster
because it's taken too long in my view.
There are others who are in front of us on timescale
and that's the last, yeah, we want to catch up.
So by October, we need to bring it back
in pretty much its near final form, frankly,
for the committee to have that proper conversation about.
but I know Colin wants to come in through your chair as well.
So yeah, just to support Richard's comments.
Generally these are much simpler than this.
This is a very ambitious risk register.
Normally they're got 12 to 20 points, quite broad points.
And they very much, as John has said earlier,
they have mitigating things that are done,
cheques that are done,
and that's quite an important part of a risk register.
So we're gonna go back to,
have something which is simpler, it certainly is a first stage, and get that done.
We had one before and it needed to be changed as Paul's done for this fit for the future.
But this is much more ambitious than was essential. And so we can go back to a simpler, broader version.
I guess the last point to me because if it's broader, that means you're less chance of missing things because everything's included.
If you're very specific, then you may well miss a specific point. So it is doable.
and just say it builds on the work Paul's done
and takes it to the next stage, I think is the key point.
Thank you.
If there is no one else, I would ask
that the comments of the committee are noted.
Thank you.
Can members please note and agree
the recommendation on page 43 of the agenda.
Thank you.
We move to agenda item seven, training events.
Can I invite Paul to present, to provide an update please?
Paul.
Thank you, Chair.
I'm happy for the report to be taking this rate. I have no
Nothing to add Jay. Thank you
Sorry chair on 6 .3. I've got one on the recommendations. One of the concern is perhaps Richard can help out here
Six point three six point three six point three on page 43 on the recommendations. I
The risk register
Does it have any impact on the wood it is would
EY and want to know where the movement is going and how the improvements are done on the pensions fund risk register and if so
should this be reported to map to keep it to keep an
eyesight on it or
Is it just sufficient where we are just want to get this assurance from the officers chair?
Yeah, I mean I I mean clearly and clearly the risk register and how we're operating is going to have an impact in the audit
Process that takes place on pension fund
accounts are in a
Originally good place
You know in the assessment that he why do for government. That's you know, that's
in a good position I
don't
think that
quite often I think MAB should have a sighting of it a little bit more than they perhaps
do at the moment because they've got the big issues at the general fund and the housing
revenue account and so on and that tends to be where most of the focus is but I think
an occasional report to MAB would be, there's only an upside from it, I can't see any downside
If I put it that way, but we can do that outside the meeting
The
Quickly work plan noted but in view of the opening statement
There's a couple of requests that we made around adding to the work plan for the next
Meeting in October. So if that can be reflected in the work plan as well
Okay
The pleasure committee is recommended to
Not the work plan for the committee
Now we move to a tonight nine
If there is no origin business to consider we shall move on to the next item
okay item 10 in view of the contents of the remaining items on the agenda the
committee is recommended to adopt the following motion that under the
provisions of section
100 a of the local government act
1972 as
amended by the local government
Access to information
Act
1985 the press and public public be excluded from the
remain from the reminder of this meeting for the consideration of the section 2
businesses of the ground grounds that contains information defined as exempt
in part one of the schedule 12a to the local government Act 1972
Thank you.