| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | |
| Posted by: | Sam Hearn | |
| Date/Time: | 16/03/15 09:51:00 |
| The surplus or underspend as some would call it was a huge embarrassment to those members of the Hounslow Labour Group who understand these matters. After all you cannot bang on about the evils of austerity and "Tory cuts" (with a straight face) when you fail to spend the funds that you do have available. These funds were initially placed in general reserves (and invested in the money market) but when Conservative Councillors pointed out that reserves have to be for a specific purpose they made the transfer into the Pension Fund. An ingenious argument was offered up - apparently the return being achieved by the Pension Fund was well in excess of that available on the money market and so that was the best place for these funds. A more honest approach would have been to have said "we have taken more money off you than we should have done and we will return it to you in a modest one-off cut in Council Tax". This would have been supported by the Conservative Group and would have been consistent with the commitment give by the Labour Party in 2010. As it is the £10m extra in the pension fund pot really made almost no difference at all. Of course if LBH had committed to making similar annual transfers for say 10 years then it would have begun to make a real difference and the employer's contribution to the LBH pension fund (paid for by the council tax payer) would, all other things being equal, have come down after the next actuarial valuation of the fund. To answer the question - there was no real logic to what the Labour Group did with these surplus finds, certainly there was no grand financial strategy, or overriding need to fund the deficit. |
| Topic | Date Posted | Posted By |
| budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 15/03/15 20:16:00 | Mark Proctor |
| Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 15/03/15 23:02:00 | Guy Lambert |
| Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 15/03/15 23:16:00 | Mark Proctor |
| Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 16/03/15 09:51:00 | Sam Hearn |
| Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 16/03/15 09:51:00 | Sam Hearn |
| Re:Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 18/03/15 08:11:00 | Andrew OSullivan |
| Re:Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 18/03/15 08:15:00 | Mark Proctor |
| Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:budget surplus went to 10m pension top-up. | 18/03/15 10:39:00 | Sam Hearn |