Council tax increases – YES in my back yards!

Posted on December 18, 2025 by henry tapper

Let me be open, I have a place in the “City of London” and my partner has a place in Eton which is part of “Windsor and Maidenhead”. Here is the news I am waking up to!

It turns out that City of London and Windsor and Maidenhead are charging below the average for councils around the country and this is not the broad shouldered carrying the load for those up north (anywhere north).  Wandsworth, Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and Windsor and Maidenhead will be exempted from rules requiring tax rises of 5 per cent or more to be put to a local referendum.

The government said residents in the councils have had “historically very low bills”.

The exemption, which will start from 2027 and last for two years, gives local leaders “the option of bringing their bills more in line with the rest of the country”, it added. The decision came as ministers announced on Wednesday the allocation of funding to local authorities using a new formula designed to give more weight to deprivation.

Well I’m going “YES in my Back Yards” – both of them. If we have to pay more (presumably a lot more) in our back yards then it’s because of the revelation in this chart.

What this chart shows is that two rich councils (Kensington and Chelsea and Wandsworth are paying below the average in England and others not much more. Going forward, the super rich councils (which don’t all have rough areas like the above two) will be top of the council tax chargers. Westminster will be top (which has bits of rough stuff in its north), the City of London and Wandsworth will cease their long reprieve while the others will all get heavy bills to balance the books with the north.

But of course there are other ways than charging council tax and the FT list a few

Officials said the six councils singled out could fill the gap in ways other than raising council tax, for example by increasing parking charges or dipping into reserves.

Hum – and pensions?  I’m not saying that surpluses in LGPS funds that have massive surpluses such as Kensington and Chelsea, should or could be raided. But the aforementioned Chelsea is currently on pension holiday and could continue that – with others joining, to keep the council tax increase down.

I say keeping increase down, the Government’s assumption that goes into the chart is that all councils will put up council tax by the maximum allowable (5%) before going to referendum to agree an increase. So watch out rich boys down south – 5% in 2027 is your starting point for increases.

So who are the likely winners, it’s the boys up north but north includes north London (Enfield) and Luton and even if you’re north of the river (Newham). These along with Manchester is singled out by the FT as beneficiaries per capita resident of the redistribution of wealth announced on Wednesday?

North is a rather loose descriptor!

My conclusion is that the current distribution of council tax and grants to local authorities is quite beyond the comprehension of us council tax payers. The FT gives the last word to a conservative spokesperson.

Sir James Cleverly, the shadow local government secretary, accused ministers of a “nakedly political power grab” that would “hike council tax across the board”. He said the government was “fiddling the funding model to punish councils that keep council tax low and moving funding to badly-run Labour councils that spend irresponsibly.”

That sounds an irresponsible statement to me. What little I know of life outside of Windsor and Maidenhead and the City of London does not suggest this is just about their “efficiencies”; these authorities have the benefit of massive wealth incoming through tourism and through the spending of the very wealthy people who have the good fortune of living in such nice places. We have broad shoulders and should pay.

As for the Local Government Pension Scheme, I hope we’ll see a fair funding review there as well.

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Thanks to DWP a multi-employer CDC plan was made final this week.

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

Julian Barker CDC civil and a servant to us at the DWP

I have been told by the DWP that the CDC Unconnected Multi-Employer (UMES) Regulations have been approved by both Houses of Parliament and were formally made (I.E. signed by the minister) yesterday and will come into effect at the end of July 2026.

Although this had been assumed to happen, the fact that it has – is a great relief to those, like me, who have been friends of CDC for well over a decade and had at some points never thought this would happen.

I am pleased it has happened within days of the announcement of David Pitt-Watson’s imminent peerage. Recognition by the Labour Party and King Charles is an honour to David and to CDC, the two are synonymous.

It is persistent of the DWP civil servants led by Julian Barker to get this regulation on the books and as they are usually pilloried by me for not getting regulation to happen, I really ought to thank them.

We have a barrage of complaints that the roadmap for Retirement CDC does not map onto the needs of DC schemes to get the 2027 requirements from its separate roadmap. Let’s make a little noise for regulation arriving when expected.

The Hansard report of the CDC UMES regulations being read in the House of Lords , complete with some extensive speeches by Bryn Davies (Lord Brixton) and Baroness Sherlock (who acts for the Government on DWP matters) is here.

There is more of this to come but not this year and I suspect next. Many are arguing that this UMES CDC is unimportant, but that disregards the importance an increase in pay of up to 60% for the rest of your life , is to people my age! UMES CDC is here, Retirement CDC is not.

Julian has been through some serious illnesses in the past five years and I am very happy for him personally.

I will finish with a promise from the DWP which sums up why we all will be friends of CDC in time.

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Innovators ; so much for yesterday – what of tomorrow?

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

I have reprinted the links to the video and slides from John Hamilton’s presentation yesterday. It is a mark of the interest the Stagecoach/Aberdeen (SASA) deal has had that the blogs surrounding John Hamilton’s appearance have had enormous interest.

But that deal is done and though I expect others will follow, it is dealing with the legacy of DB for the private sector

For most private sector companies, the question is what will the future bring and this is open to debate. To distort a famous saying…

Give me change but not now!

Just as legacy DB has struggled over whether to go with an insurer , stay with the sponsor or move to superfund, another sponsor or even the PPF, – so we are struggling with DC going forward.

It sounds churlish for me to point this out, so great the effort of Stagecoach with its legacy but it does still have 24,000 bus drivers who it employs today and will tomorrow.

My question to them and to the bus companies like them in the UK is what are you going to do and when are you going to do it. Because just as it seems obvious to run on your DB plans than hand the profits to the insurers , so it seems obvious that you consider the DC plans which you are putting in the hands of commercial providers for the meantime.

And here , staring us in the face is the other “obvious” thing for us all to consider

Torsten Bell

There is a number that emanates from consultancies including WTW and Aon but most recently from Hymans Robertson which talks of these new collective funds providing up to 60% of the DC funds we invest in individually.

That number is being used by the Pension Minister. If it is not disputed, why are we continuing to rely on  DC to pay workplace pensions? Why don’t we grasp the better CDC alternative as soon as we can, even if that will need some effort on all sides?

I suspect in the back of a lot of our minds lurks the statement “Give me Change but Not Now!”

So I put it to Stagecoach and the other bus drivers and the many other large companies who could take a lead on CDC, that now is the time to be bold just as the Trustees of Stagecoach were, just as Aberdeen was. For we cannot go on ducking the challenges we are faced!

Here is the great story of the past, I hope in a year’s time I will be printing the great story of the future!

 

Yesterday’s news

If you missed this  coffee morning presentation from John , you are in luck. It’s with you below, with a download if you want to share it – here.

If you want to see the slides they are below and they can be downloaded from this link.

Thanks to all that came and to those who tried but couldn’t get on the call. Let’s move on now – we have another challenge to consider!

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“Yet to buyers” and “propertied pensioners”; we should have the spaces we need

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

Martin Arnold brings the pensioner together with the first time buyer in this fascinating article.

He is talking in the FT about the work of the FCA, an organisation that is really getting its act together.

It [FCA] also plans to examine how innovative products, such as retirement interest-only mortgages, could help older people raise money against the value of their home or repay an earlier mortgage that is maturing.

Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the FCA, said in a speech last month that 43 per cent of people were projected not to be saving enough for retirement despite an expected high rate of home ownership.

“How will households meet retirement goals, needs and potential care costs?”

said Rathi.

“Can some of the nation’s £9tn of housing wealth be unlocked more effectively, and put to more productive use, particularly to sustain living standards in later life?”

The FCA said it would launch consultations on its planned rule changes early next year, including measures to encourage artificial intelligence to be used to improve and speed up mortgage advice.

It aims to start making changes by the end of 2026. It will launch a market study to examine

“how the later-life lending market could develop to meet the different needs of future consumers”

including allowing more holistic advice on the range of financial options available to people in retirement.

It’s a question that many younger people will be asking as property remains in the hands of those for whom ownership has no practical value and plenty of liability. The value of property is not going up.

This may seem a good thing for younger people getting on the housing ladder but an ongoing problem when it comes to the properties they want to buy – the leasehold properties – typically flats which have lagged freehold properties in value growth for many years. We need families having the space of large freehold properties, and not to have to live in their parent’s house while saving for what they need.

Recent research by Harry Scoffin of Free Leaseholders suggests that the freehold properties in this country are owned by those of pensionable age and that the failure of these properties to move into the hands of young families is preventing young families from happening – 43% of young couples without children put this down to having no suitable place to afford to buy to bring children up in.

The FCA are quite right to link the problems with property management for pensioners with first time buyers, the property market could become more better for both groups if finance became better available for young and old.

But we also need to confront the problem that faces older people and that is selling out and moving to leasehold properties is not a good bet, especially if you have spent your life moving up not down the property ladder. Moving into a leasehold flat is not a good option for pensioners and we have to do something to give leasehold its good name. It is not a good option for first time buyers either, they are not wanting to buy leasehold flats and the result is a real issue for the FCA.

It is of course a real issue for those who are looking at the financial security of older generations and worrying about the lack of it amongst those much younger. For those of us looking at the issues of pension adequacy, this is a huge problem a generation or two down the line.

“Reforming the mortgage market can help address the fact that as a society we’re saving too little for later life, yet people have huge wealth tied up in property,”  he [Nikhil Rathi] said.

The rules on more flexible products, such as “part-and-part mortgages” on which only some of the loan is repaid before it matures, could be made easier to help more first-time buyers get on the property market.

Other changes being considered by the FCA could help those with variable or lumpy income, such as self-employed people, to get mortgages as well as those who have had bad debts in the past but have since improved their credit rating.

Let’s go back to need of space and where we need to live. The FCA should be encouraging behavior that balances young and old people’s needs .  I see too many youngsters waiting to buy a house for a family and too many pensioners sitting on  freehold property they can’t properly enjoy.

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Strata creates Australian property micro-states and teaches the UK lessons!

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

Last night, I sat and listened to Michael Teys . He talked to us of how Australian’s European founders rejected the UK system of freehold and have built in the past 250 years a system that has much to teach the UK.

It was something to visit the Number one Lecture Room of Kings College. I went , not for the room, but for the lecture on ways Australians structure the ownership of property using its Strata system.

This evening was sponsored by Michael Teys and it is one that has left a lasting impression on me and those who sat with me. I  found myself sitting next to Norma Cohen, a personal hero as a journalist and historian of the 20th Century. This was no ordinary evening lecture.

I was able to walk home to my leasehold flat, knowing the work that is being done by us as Directors of the leaseholder company that has taken some control in the management of our property (though we still struggle with ground rent).

I turned to the subject late at night and woke early to blog, only to find that my words had been better uttered on social media by Joe, a young man I had met earlier. Here is what Joe had to say on what we saw about Australia;  I cannot say it better!

View Joe Douglas’ graphic link

Tonight I attended a fascinating and very timely talk at King’s College London by Michael Teys , one of Australia’s leading strata lawyers, hosted by groundbreaking campaign Free Leaseholders led by the incredible Harry Scoffin .

🇦🇺 inherited English law but flatly rejected the “leasehold” part. “Freehold strata” was the innovative solution, allowing collective ownership of a multi-occupancy building. Something we are missing in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

The key feature is it does away with the role of an absentee landlord collecting ground rent and wielding power over people’s homes. The owners govern and own the property themselves. In 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿, even with a resident management company, leaseholders may govern but they don’t truly own and control.

Today, 15% of Australians live in strata. By 2050, it’s projected to be 50%. Banks lend against it. Developers promote it. Disputes are far rarer than in the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 leasehold system. It works and has done for decades, exported now across multiple countries.

“Nobody in England and Wales is expecting utopia with Commonhold. They’re asking for something that already exists so they can own and control their own property.”

As someone who has spent the past few years navigating the sharp end of leasehold, this was an inspiring way to end a tough year. There is a solution. People are pushing for it. Commonhold and common sense will prevail!

Thanks to Free Leaseholders and Michael Teys for an excellent evening.
Leasehold Commonhold LeaseholdReform

Teys taught us that Australia has used the Strata system to create micro-states where property rules ensure justice for an increasing number of freeholders. Much for us to learn from.

There is a video to come and I hope that anyone who owns a leasehold in the UK or who have friends and relatives (or both!) will take an interest.

This Government has promised legislation to give power to leaseholders to release them the clasp of freehold.  The power of the Freeholder is what  Norma explained to me as a servitude that is many centuries old.

My mind goes back to history lessons at school and the importance that was explained of owning freehold to voting rights, till 1832 freeholding was the only credential for having a vote.

We have voted this Government in on a promise of reforming property ownership rules and I will be sorry if it fails to get the promised legislation on the parliamentary table before Christmas.

Michael Teys

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I wouldn’t give my pension to Americans who don’t care about the climate

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

BlackRock chair Larry Fink. The asset manager retreated from voting on climate change after lawsuits brought by Republican attorneys-general

I  am pleased to see that Dutch pension funds are no longer putting their money with BlackRock now it’s retreated from voting on climate change. Well done Mary McDougall & Co for bringing our attention to it.`

The PME group, which manages €59bn of retirement savings for workers in the metal and technology sectors, said it had “decided to end our relationship with BlackRock” following a months-long review.

There are two views of money at work here. Firstly there is the deal between the scheme managers which may be commercial and then there is the deal done for the members, which is fiduciary and social. The PME group has to be both commercial and social and that means standing behind the principles it has established.

BlackRock have changed their position on voting to align it with American political consensus and the consequence for the Dutch fund manager is to terminate its relationship.

We have had one such example that springs to mind (though there may be other decisions of the same kind taken by pension trustees in conjunction with their advisers). The FT reminds us

In February, the UK-based The People’s Pension pulled £28bn from State Street, saying it was prioritising “sustainability, active stewardship and long-term value creation”.

I have not forgotten. My estimation of People’s Pension went up in February when they announced this and it goes up every time I read such news.

We should be particularly pleased to see American Pension Funds voting off American fund managers who do not comply with instructions.

In late November, New York City’s top finance official Brad Lander recommended that three of the city’s biggest pension funds drop BlackRock as a manager of more than $42bn, as the metropolis looks to use its weight in markets to tackle climate change.

Lander, who will step down as city comptroller at the end of the year, said BlackRock and two other asset managers, Fidelity and PanAgora, had failed “to address climate risk with the seriousness we expect”.

New York has recently made its position on American political behaviour quite clear. Now I read of a top official determining that New York’s City Pension funds should not tolerate capitulation to political interference.

It is not woke to have principles about climate risk and stick to them and I hope that those of us strong minded about this in the UK or Europe, will recognise and support those in America who do not give in to the commercial advantage that can be gained by dong what Government considers commercially to the gain of it and the country.

It cannot be commercially for a country or a Government to see the climate continue to deteriorate. Canada, with a form BOE head Mark Carney at the helm, will have none of that.

Thanks FT for publishing this and laying out the facts in such a way that we can have no doubt how you feel on this.

I wouldn’t give my pension to Americans who don’t care about the climate. I wouldn’t and I won’t and I will pay to remove my money from LGIM if it moves from the mandates I chose for my personal investments. I don’t suppose I will have to, knowing Legal & General. There are of course alternatives if they did!

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SASA – (Stagecoach Aberdeen Scheme Adoption) – the video and deck

Posted on December 16, 2025 by henry tapper

John Hamilton

If you missed this  coffee morning presentation from John , you are in luck. It’s with you below, with a download if you want to share it – here.

If you want to see the slides they are below and they can be downloaded from this link.

Thanks to all that came and to those who tried but couldn’t get on the call. It was that good I’m going to watch the video now!

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How our pensions are thought of and debated by those who represent us

Posted on December 16, 2025 by henry tapper

John Glen – impassioned on pensions in Westminster Hall

How pensions are treated in parliament is set out admirably by William Wright. I cannot remember intensity of debate on pensions like we’re doing and it’s not just around show-pieces like the Budget and the readings of the Pension Schemes Bill. Politics is not everything but it’s a debate by people who represent us. John Glen is MP for Salisbury as well as a former Minister in the Treasury, Richard Tice is outspoken as Reform is; Reform reflects the current mood of more of us than any other party. The Liberals are taking an interest in pensions, I haven’t seen since Steve Webb departed the Chamber in 2016

I do not hear an argument against fiduciary intervention through mandation. Steve Darling, the Liberal spokesperson remarks upon the danger of loss of liberty (a very liberal thought) but I do not get a general aversion to what Bell is proposing in the Bill.

Sometimes we underestimate the notion of ” a nation” and think that what people are saying is what we are told in our conference halls. I am more interested by what is being said in parliament and the extent to which it reflects what ordinary people think.

There are a lot of reasons people have to be angry with what has or hasn’t happened in terms of implementing promises. But I do not think that pensions is an area that ordinary people feel hard done by. It’s the extraordinary people, those with superfluous wealth who have lost out since July 2024.

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What next for what was Scottish Equitable? Will Aegon UK end up more than legacy?

Posted on December 16, 2025 by henry tapper

NEXT and WAS don’t go well in the same sentence. Can Aegon really go anywhere but “legacy”?

There are two matters in my mind. The first is how this impacts on Aegon’s clients. Aegon is what became of Scottish Equitable which was , for a while, a very reputable life company in the IFA market. It paid high for its business and IFA’s loved getting up to 150% of Lautro, but it was not to last. Aegon took on the mutual and Aegon has never quite made it in any private pension market. It is not an oh so fashionable bulk annuity or retail pension provider.

It has a master trust but is neither quite there in workplace pensions and will have to eat its personal pensions to get fat enough to make the 2030 and 2035 cuts as Aegon is not winning employers to it as an occupational muti-employer provider. Aegon has disparaged CDC following a bad time with the Dutch version. In short I cannot see Aegon doesn’t have a legacy that clients can reach out to, the glory days of Scottish Equitable are over and no replacement has been found.

The second worry I have for Aegon is , as Gordon Aiken is pointing out, the life company has some very much more dynamic competitors. Lloyds Bank is clearly going to support the lame duck of a master trust it owns with Scottish Widows.  Forcing the Lloyds Bank Staff work pension into its arms without much glee from what I can see from Lloyd’s Bank staff. All the same , it will give Scottish Widows some relevance as a master trust and with Scottish Widows having a huge book of legacy personal pensions, they will not have problems with scale- not with an override at their disposal to move personal pension pots into the master trust.

As for Standard Life and Phoenix, this is a business that appears a bit skint at present but it is the only one to have the capacity to write annuity business. To Standard Life, Aegon will look a legacy business as it moves forward on many fronts, I’m not so sure it’s got the appetite for more of Britain and especially Scotland’s heritage but as mentioned above, it is very good at it.

Is Aegon really the prize I grew up when I started out in the 1980s? What has happened to see it hung out to dry by a company to be named in future TransAmerica?

Are Aegon’s top staff going to hang about a company that has made it known it wants to receive offers by February of next year? The investment business is not coming with the life company and this does not sound a happy company to be travelling with.

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Trustee pension consultations fill up the Christmas stocking.

Posted on December 16, 2025 by henry tapper

 

It has two months since he announced an imminent consultation on what we should expect from pension trustees. While Torsten Bell has been busy getting a bill through , CDC going and a budget over the line, this document has been sitting idle and it doesn’t arrive with a lot of urgency attaching to it!

Louise was till recently a TPR stalwart and now she leads the way at one of our largest and most dynamic firms of professional trustees , IGG. I suspect there’s a little frustration in this short message to the market! If it’s important to the Torsten Bell DWP it only takes 6 weeks.

So thanks to Professional Pensions for this smorgasbord of ideas which can be fun in the consultation

The DWP said the 2024 Work and Pensions Select Committee DB report and the 2023 independent review by The Pensions Regulator (TPR) both recommended mandatory accreditation for professional trustees, noting it wants to “explore what additional requirements should be placed on professional trustees given the increasingly influential role they play in the UK pension system”.

The consultation also sets out measures to improve the diversity of trustee boards. The DWP said ensuring diversity of thought on trustee boards is a “key pillar of good governance”, noting it wants to explore ways it can bring more diversity, talent and skills to trustee boards, asking what role the government and regulators can play in helping schemes attract a diverse and talented pool of individuals to trusteeship, and whether there should be any limits on the length of trustee appointments.

The consultation also asks whether there is a role of a public independent trustee appointed by TPR to be used where a scheme’s trustees need to be replaced or when TPR is asked to appoint a trustee to an orphan scheme.

Additionally, the consultation asks respondents what they think works well in the current trusteeship and governance system, what the barriers to good trusteeship are, and what further support trustees need looking ahead to 2030 and beyond.

It also looks at whether TPR should have the same levels of regulatory oversight as the Financial Conduct Authority regarding administrators and services and whether administrators should have to be registered with TPR to be involved in administering a scheme. It also asks whether increased consolidation activity poses any risks and how any risks can be mitigated to ensure an orderly transition to pension ‘megafunds’.

APPT has hardly been blown away

Association of Professional Pension Trustees (APPT) chair, Rachel Croft, agreed that trustees need to continue to have the right skills and experience and that to be fully prepared to take schemes forward successfully.  

“We note the important role the paper outlines that professional trustees are playing in this,” she continued.

“We welcome the trustee directory, subject of course to it not being excessively onerous administratively.  We also welcome the questions on accreditation and standards as areas we are already examining and looking at with key stakeholders.

“Administration is also a key consideration for the consultation.  Trustees are well-placed to support the development and improvement of administration services that members receive and professional trustees are playing a key role here.”

However, she said that the APPT had one caveat at this early stage in the consideration of the consultation document: “Naturally, we advise careful consideration of applying any restrictions to appointment numbers or terms, given the need to manage market capacity and encourage the continuation of training and development for professional trustees.”

Change is needed. TPR currently does not have capacity nor authority to regulate pension scheme administration. This strikes me as of first importance to this consultation, most of the local problems people have with pensions come from poor administration.

While this is swimming along , we should be getting a consultation from the Pensions Regulations before Christmas on  a code of practice  for CDC authorisation. I suspect it will look rather like the last one we had in 2022!

I suspect that it will put the trustees at the heart of the authorisation process and I look forward to responding to both.

 

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