The Pensions Investment Committee met to confirm the minutes of its previous meeting, but was ultimately unable to do so. The committee will now have to wait until February to confirm the minutes from its November meeting.

Confirmation of decision taken by the Pensions Investment Committee on 20 November 2024

The key item on the agenda was the confirmation of a decision made at the committee's previous meeting on 20 November 2024. The committee was asked to confirm its decision to:

1. Note the content of a report entitled Pension Fund Review of Restrictions and Exclusions
2. Discuss and agree changes to the council's Responsible Investment Beliefs Statement
3. Discuss and consider a list of other potential next steps

Due to an administrative error, only the first of these decisions was minuted in the formal record of the meeting. A report prepared by Jeremy Chambers, the council's Monitoring Officer, explained:

At its meeting of 20th November 2024, the Committee discussed at length the matters referred to in paragraph 3.1 above and reached a unanimous view at the end of the debate.

At the end of the debate, the Committee unanimously agreed to recommendation 1, i.e. to note the report. Unfortunately, recommendations 2 and 3 were not included. This does not reflect the full extent of what Committee members or officers in attendance thought the Committee was agreeing to.

The report proposed three potential solutions to the problem:

1. Wait until the next meeting to confirm the minutes
2. Call an extraordinary meeting to ratify the decision
3. Email all committee members to request confirmation that they agreed with the decision

It transpired that there was not unanimous agreement on how to proceed, and the committee was unable to confirm the minutes of its previous meeting.