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Huge cost of council pensions
Figures released by the Tax Payers Alliance reveal in detail the barely-believable debt in pension provision accumulated in Leeds Council's LGPS employee pension scheme – in the top ten of all UK local authority plans.
You need to take a deep breath to spell it out. The liabilities are one billion, nine hundred and eighty four million, nine hundred and five thousand pounds – briefly, almost 2 billion, with a deficit of 714,767,000 between assets and liabilities.
It seems that to maintain this munificently generous final salary scheme (abandoned as unsustainable by the private sector) over 20 per cent of all council tax receipts go straight into the pension provision for council staff.
So, from my Band D council tax payment, over 320 is directly snaffled, without a penny going to community services such as roads, refuse collection, housing, education, social services, sports facilities or even libraries.
All are deprived to fund a golden sunset for every council employee, not forgetting that this reverse Robin Hood scheme is open to every one of Leeds's 99 councillors...and guest who voted it into law?
This means that the prospect of any realistic revision into a defined benefit scheme, benefiting Leeds taxpayers, is about as likely as seeing squadrons of pink pigs circling City Hall.
As a victim of the Equitable Life collapse (where my small pension was halved due to FSA incompetence), I strongly object to my modest retirement income being raided to fund this grotesquely unfair scheme.
V Watson, Garforth, Leeds
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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