Latest news & announcements

2020 Annual Review: Avon Pension Fund Engagement Highlights

16 March 2021

Our ESG engagement/stewardship annual review of 2020 is here. This report outlines the engagement activity carried out by EOS Federated Hermes on behalf of Avon Pension Fund – and aims to highlight and quantify all the ESG engagement/stewardship activities carried out throughout 2020.

657 companies were engaged with across 2,419 environmental, social, governance, strategy, risk and communications issues and objectives. The impressive figures held in the report highlight how much of an impact we can have, both for the UK and world beyond.

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Christmas and New Year office opening times

21 December 2020

The Avon Pension Fund office opening times over the Christmas and New Year holidays are as follows:

  • Thurs 24th December (Christmas Eve) Closed
  • Fri 25th December (Christmas Day) Closed
  • Mon 28th December (Boxing Day Bank Holiday) Closed
  • Tues 29th December Open 9am–4pm
  • Wed 30th December Open 9am–4pm
  • Thurs 31st December (New Year's Eve) Open 9am–4pm
  • Fri 1st January 2021 (New Year's Day) Closed
  • Mon 4th January Normal opening hours resume (9am–4pm)

Our telephone service will be operating as per the above times.

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Preparing for retirement

11 December 2020
Preparing for retirement

Due to the ongoing Coronavirus crisis the Affinity Connect pre-retirement workshops have been temporarily replaced by a dedicated 2-hour Pre-Retirement Online Course.

If you have booked to attend the upcoming July workshop, Affinity will contact you to invite you to join this Online Course.

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Public sector exit cap introduced

30 November 2020

The Government has introduced a cap on the amount of money a public sector employer can pay when an employee leaves their employment. It is called the public sector exit cap, or £95k cap. It applies to employees leaving public sector employments from 4th November 2020.

The exit cap is most likely to affect you if you are a public sector employee aged 55 or over and you are made redundant or you leave your employment due to business efficiency. This is because the amount your employer pays to the pension fund so that you can receive your pension early is included in the exit cap calculation.

The Local Government Association have published LGPS member FAQs on the exit cap, which are available at the following location: https://lgpsmember.org/news/story/exitcap_qanda.php

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Responsible Investment Annual Report 2019/20

2 November 2020

The Avon Pension Fund has published its eighth Responsible Investment Annual Report. The report underlines the Funds recognition that transparency and disclosure of its Responsible Investing Policy and the related activities is an important element of being a responsible investor.

The report details the activities undertaken during 2019/20 by the Fund, our managers and our partners to deliver and support our Responsible Investing Policy.

This year’s key achievements include the doubling of our commitment to renewable infrastructure and increasing our assets allocated to sustainable equities from 3.5% to 10% of all assets.

As we recognise the importance of investor collaboration, another key development we were pleased to make was joining the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC). This presents us with the opportunity to participate in policy advocacy and portfolio implementation work alongside many like-minded investors and will help us ensure we continue as a leader in the field of responsible investment.

Our Responsible Investment priorities remain unchanged for the coming year as does our commitment to create value for our beneficiaries and at the same time make a positive environmental and social impact.

PDF iconResponsible Investing Annual Report 2019/20

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Your Annual Pension Benefit Statement 2020 is on its way

12 August 2020

If you are paying into the local government pension scheme (LGPS) you will receive an Annual Pension Benefit Statement from the Avon Pension Fund by the end of August.

It shows the pension you have built up to 31 March 2020 as well as a future projection of your benefits if you remain paying into the scheme to your Normal Pension Age (NPA). This is the age you would retire and take your benefits without any reduction to your pension.

The statements will be posted out to you from mid to late August.

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Focus on Investments: Sustainability and Coronavirus (COVID-19)

11 August 2020

The economic and societal impact of Covid-19 is now becoming more apparent and poses many additional challenges for companies, consumers, governments and investors alike. In our last newsletter we communicated our plans to directly address the risks posed by climate change. As we start to adjust to the ‘new normal’ it is important we redouble our efforts to transform our portfolio for a lower carbon world.

Amidst the unprecedented market volatility in March, companies responding positively to the challenges of climate change, environmental sustainability and social well-being were able to demonstrate their value. Over the first three months of the year, the Fund’s low carbon global equities outperformed the mainstream equity market and our sustainable equity portfolio experienced roughly half of the severe declines suffered by its benchmark.

We continue to make progress in the following areas, which remain critical if we are to achieve our ambitious climate change goals:

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Update for members - Coronavirus (COVID-19)

8 August 2020

What we are doing

As with many organisations, due to the current COVID-19 health crisis, we have had to close our office and our staff are now homeworking.

Therefore, we will be responding to, and dealing with, urgent enquiries and cases as our priority. Our focus will be the payment of all pension benefits to our members and their dependants.

Read our FAQs

In conjunction with the Local Government Association we have produced a set of Coronavirus (COVID-19) FAQs for scheme members.

The FAQs covers subjects such as the ‘Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’, ‘Emergency Volunteer Leave’ and can be access from the members website at the following location:

www.avonpensionfund.org.uk/coronavirus-covid-19-faqs-for-lgps-members

How you can help

Please help us by wherever possible getting in touch by email. If you have an enquiry, please email: avonpensionfund@bathnes.gov.uk  

You can also use the ‘Contact us’ facility on our website, to send your enquiry with your contact details by visiting the following webpage:

www.avonpensionfund.org.uk/contact-us  

You can also access your pension account using our secure self-service website my pension online. Where you can view your pension details, access your annual benefit statement, perform estimates and update your expression of wish nominations and contact details.

If you haven’t registered for my pension online already, it’s a simple process, visit the registration webpage https://myaccount.avonpensionfund.org.uk/ with your National Insurance number, click on ‘Register’ and follow the instructions.

As we currently have very limited access to both our building and incoming post, we have introduced a secure service by which you can receive and return your documents digitally.

Full details on our electronic processing service and identity checking is available here:

PDF iconCOVID-19 Update – New Administrative Procedures

Full details on how to use the SecureShare portal software is available here:

PDF iconSecureShare Guide for Scheme Members

If you are not able to communicate digitally you can send documents to the Avon Pension Fund at the usual address, however, incoming post is currently retrieved on a limited basis, and we must therefore make you aware that this may change as the situation with COVID-19 continues to unfold, and as such there may be a significant delay in our ability to retrieve your documents for action.

You can still contact us by telephone if your enquiry is urgent, please call 01225 395100. Our telephone service is operating weekdays, between 9am and 4pm.

We’ll keep updating our website regularly as the situation changes.

We appreciate your understanding and support during this difficult time.

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