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In a public meeting in Bath on 28 March, the Avon Pension Fund Committee voted to maintain its current approach to investing in Aerospace & Defence. 

Now that the Committee has made a decision in principle, we will consult our members, which will inform the Committee’s final decision. 

We’re pleased to announce a £50m investment in local businesses, supporting regional growth. 

This investment represents the third in our local impact strategy, with significant progress already made in the areas of green energy and affordable housing.

On 28 March the Avon Pension Fund Committee will meet to review its aerospace and defence investments. 

This follows significant work which the Fund has already undertaken, following petitions in December and appeals from Bristol City Council to divest from aerospace and defence companies which supply Israel.

The pension fund has £18m or 0.3% of its £6 billion assets invested in such companies, which primarily supply NATO partners and the UK government.

The rules of the pension scheme changed on 1 October 2023 to address age discrimination. You may qualify for underpin protection if you were an active member of the LGPS on or before 1 April 2012 and active between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2022. If you do qualify for underpin protection, you do not need to do anything we will write to you in due course.

Councillor Paul Crossley, Chair of the Avon Pension Fund Committee and Councillor Shaun Stephenson-McGall, Committee Vice-Chair and Chair of the Investment Panel, are signatories to a letter calling for action on the global stocktake.

In the latest step towards achieving our net zero goals, we’ve committed £50 million to a new renewables fund. The fund has been created specifically for a consortium of LGPS funds belonging to the Brunel Pension Partnership.

We've worked with our asset manager to move over £700 million of equity investments into an innovative, Paris-aligned funding solution.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has published a member factsheet - The McCloud judgment and your LGPS pension - that summarises the McCloud judgment and changes the Government are making to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

On 9 March 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) laid the LGPS (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (‘the regulations’). The regulations move the annual revaluation date from 1 April to 6 April. The regulations are effective from 31 March 2023.

The Government is launching a new initiative which will allow users to securely view all their pension savings in one place. Savers will be able to choose from a range of Pensions Dashboards and, after verifying their identity, users will be able to trigger a secure digital search across virtually the entire pensions industry. A summary of the pensions found will be displayed back to the user on their smart phone, tablet, or desktop browser.