The Harrow Council Pension Fund Committee endorsed a draft funding strategy statement to be sent for consultation, and reviewed updates on investment pooling, risk management, and code of practice compliance. The committee also approved a revised responsible investment policy.

Triennial Valuation: Draft Funding Strategy Statement

The committee approved the draft Funding Strategy Statement¹ (FSS) and endorsed the proposals for consultation with employers and other stakeholders, as outlined in paragraph 6 of the report. The draft FSS, prepared by Hymans Robertson, is effective from 1 April 2026. It outlines how the fund intends to meet its present and future liabilities. The statement includes key policies in the appendices, such as those regarding cessations, contribution reviews, and pass-through arrangements.

Stephen Law, the funds actuary from Hymans Robertson, explained that the funding strategy statement is a statutory document that the pension fund has to have and review every three years as part of the formal valuation process. He noted that the changes suggested by the Scheme Advisory Board were not substantial compared to the fund's previous funding strategy statement, but subtle changes were made to comply with the new guidance.

A key change involves treating academies and colleges similarly to the council in contribution rate calculations. The Department for Education will guarantee to cover any deficit in the pension fund should a multi-academy trust or college fail, in exchange for this change.

The council's contribution rates will move to 17% of pay from 1 April 2026. After 2028-29, the contribution rate will be allowed to move 1% of pay up or down per year.

London CIV and LGPS Update

The committee noted the report on the London Collective Investment Vehicle² (LCIV) and Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) update. Patrick Kilgallen, Interim Pensions Manager, noted that the Pensions Bill, which contained the legislative changes needed to make the government's proposed pooling changes law, was laid before parliament on 5 June 2025 and is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons. He added that fund officers are working with LCIV and other funds to establish an investment management agreement that will replace the old agreement between the fund and LCIV.

The report noted that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have recently published another consultation which addresses access and fairness in the LGPS. The consultation covers proposals to extend access to the scheme for councillors and mayors in England. Councillor David Ashton, Portfolio Holder for Finance & Highways, noted that the council had previously discussed the possibility of councillors going into the scheme about 14 years ago and decided against it being too complicated.

Pension Board Minutes

The committee noted the report on the Pension Board minutes of the meeting held on 4 November 2025.

Honorary Alderman Richard Romain, Independent Adviser, raised making the minutes of Part 2 of the meeting available to Pension Board members and letting the Chair of the Pension Board attend Part 2 of the meeting.

The Pension Board minutes revealed that 413 pensioners had not responded to the life certificate exercise, which checks that pensioners are still alive and entitled to receive their pension payments.

Draft Annual Report of the Pension Board 24-25

The committee noted the Draft Annual Report of the Pension Board 24-25.

Honorary Alderman Richard Romain said that he did not think that the annual report should come to the pension committee on its way to council, but Councillor David Ashton disagreed, saying that it seemed sensible that the pension committee actually saw the report before they saw it on the council agenda.

The report noted that the Pension Board had expressed concern about the performance of the administration team, as measured through the service KPIs and officers have explained that after the loss of key personnel the team has struggled to meet KPI expectations.

Pension Fund Risk Register

The committee considered the risk register as of Q2 2025/26.

Patrick Kilgallen noted that there had been no changes to any of the risk scores since the last update in June 2025. He said that the risks one to four are red risks, and are high investment risks, recognising the kind of volatility that exists in these particular areas.

Honorary Alderman Richard Romain said that his experience elsewhere is that the risk register is taken very much as being investment performance as well as admin. He also said that in risk 12 investment strategy, for some reason that came down from D2 to E2 in June, and he was not sure why it happened then, but that seems to be it should be getting riskier because the strategy's advice is changing from Mercer to a totally unproven London CIV who are setting up strategy team for the first time.

TPR Code of Practice Compliance Update

The committee agreed that the next steps and actions set out in the report be implemented by officers, and delegated the report to Pension Board for further scrutiny and for the Pension Board to report back to the committee if they had any concerns.

The report set out the areas where compliance was not complete and actions the Fund would take to address them.

Patrick Kilgallen said that the report was like an in-depth internal audit of the pension fund. He noted that the Pensions Regulator expects compliance across 14 chapters of the code. He added that the pensions regulator is very focused on administration.

Councillor Jerry Miles asked why knowledge and understanding standards were 36% not complete and also on scheme administration 33% not complete. Patrick Kilgallen responded that in terms of knowledge and understanding, this is one of the policies that needs to be reviewed and updated. He added that in terms of scheme administration that goes back to knowledge and understanding being in pension administration officers heads rather than written down, so they need to put in place procedure notes to document controls and processes.

Draft Responsible Investment Policy

The committee considered the revision of the adopted Responsible Investment Policy from Mercer, and approved it.

Aniket Patel, who was not named in the attendee list, said that the committee had asked that the report the policy be taken away and the language approved.

Councillor Norman Stevenson, Portfolio Holder for Business, Employment & Property, suggested tightening up some of the phraseology in terms of whether it's the London CIV or the underlying investment managers that the pensions committee is responsible looking over. He said that this committee is no longer responsible for quite a lot of these things it was in the past.

Patrick Kilgallen said that the government are intending on bringing putting training as a requirement into law as part of the pensions bill, and so the committee will have to see a training plan, and regular training on responsible investment would form part of that training plan. Councillor David Ashton responded that the committee by definition and its nature as councillors is a lay committee and if you try and train people to up too much it's unrealistic quite frankly, so they need to be able to do is to have sufficient understanding of the area to appreciate the information from professionals but to ask them to become professionals it's not realistic.