Northern LGPS raises concerns over short deadlines in “Fit for the Future” consultation

The Northern LGPS Pool – a partnership between three of the largest funds in the LGPS in England & Wales, the Greater Manchester Pension, the Merseyside Pension Fund and West Yorkshire Pension – raised concerns over deadlines during the government’s “Fit for the Future” consultation.

While the fund expressed support for the government’s overall objectives and many specific proposals, especially those stemming from the “Good Governance” review, it also highlighted several areas for improvement that could deliver better outcomes for LGPS pools as well as participating employers, and taxpayers.

Short deadlines emerged as a major concern across several sectors of the proposal. Northern LGPS first said it had significant concerns regarding the short deadline for responding to the consultation.

The fund said that given the significance of the matters being consulted upon and that the consultation period covers the Christmas holidays, it would have expected a minimum consultation period of 12 weeks, rather than the 9 weeks provided by the government.

Additionally, and possibly of even greater concern, is the very short timeframe for pools to submit business plans outlining how they intend to evolve their operations to meet the proposals in the consultation, according to Northern LGPS.

In particular, the fund highlighted the requirement for pools to assess whether merging or collaborating with other pools is more likely to provide better outcomes by the same deadline. It argued that this timeframe is far too short to conduct the necessary due diligence on matters of such complexity and potential financial significance.

While the government’s reforms aim to encourage greater collaboration between pools—a goal supported by Northern LGPS—it said that setting such a short and arbitrary deadline will undermine the ability to achieve this.

Similarly, Northern LGPS noted that the proposed implementation timeline targeting March 2026 is highly challenging. It argued that setting unrealistic timescales is unhelpful and that rushing the process could result in suboptimal outcomes at a critical moment for the LGPS.