Protect Our Pensions LGPS Campaigns Issue 17

You will all understandably be wondering what is happening in the negotiations over the LGPS. At this point in time, negotiations are continuing and are heading in a positive direction. There are still one or two issues which need to be concluded, but we are hopeful that we will be in a position to brief members and activists on the proposals in the not-too-distant future. Once materials have been distributed and briefings taken place, the five Service Group Executives covered by the LGPS will meet to make their recommendations before we start a ballot of all members of those Service groups. They are: Local Government, Police and Justice, Community, Higher Education and Water, Environment and Transport (WET).

We have been discussing the scheme for the future from 2014 and governance arrangements in the new scheme. This has involved absorbing and negotiating on the basis of very detailed information on the LGPS, taken from 2010 valuations, data from the Government Actuaries Department (GAD) and the Treasury. We want to do the very best by you – LGPS members – and so the process has taken rather longer than we anticipated. We will be meeting again this week and the start of next week, but hope to move soon after that to a conclusion.

As soon as we have concluded the negotiations, we will let you all know what the proposals are. Your Regions are being kept informed of the state-of-play so that they are in a position to organise briefings as soon as possible.

Keep talking, keep recruiting!

Soon we will be consulting members over the new LGPS from 2014. Now is the time to tell non-members that they will not be part of that consultation unless they join UNISON. Make sure you talk to every non-member in your workplace and give them the latest on the LGPS and get them to sign up!

We need more and more members to show the employers that we have got the industrial strength to resist attacks on pensions, pay, jobs and conditions. So carry on organising! Contact Indira Patel, i.patel@unison.co.uk if you would like to be a UNISON pension contact or steward.