EMS claims £6.5 million exit credit from Northamptonshire

The Northamptonshire County Council Pension Fund is being sued for £6.5 million by Enterprise Managed Services (EMS), which was dropped from a £7 million a year contract by Northampton Borough Council (NBC) and Daventry District Council (DDC) in 2018.

EMS, now part of the Amey Group, claims it should get around £6.5 million as an exit credit from the Northamptonshire pension fund following the termination of its contract. According to a local press report on the dispute, EMS became an admitted body in the LGPS and a significant number of staff were transferred by NBC and DCC to it, when it had a contract for bin collection and street cleaning from 2011 to 2018. EMS’s case is that when its contract ended, there was a £6.5 million surplus on assets over liabilities for the transferred employees’ pensions in the Northamptonshire fund.

However, NBC and DDC are resisting the claim from EMS, on the basis that it had no expectations of a windfall payment from the pension fund, and such a payment would be the detriment of other pension fund members. But EMS believes that under regulations introduced in 2018, it is entitled to an exit credit when there is a surplus in the fund and an admitted body in the LGPS is removed.