Conservative councillors in Swansea have voted against a recommendation to make a payment totalling £11,500 per year from now on to the chair of a committee which oversees the City and County of Swansea Pension Fund, and also backdate it to include the whole of the 2021-22 financial year.
The recommendation was approved by councillors on the advice of officers - but it has now emerged that no retrospective payment will be made for 2021-22 and that the current chairman, Cllr Clive Lloyd, would not have accepted it anyway. The latest position concludes a somewhat confusing episode which began at a meeting of full council, when chief finance officer Ben Smith outlined the senior salary recommendation.
Mr Smith explained that the pension fund chairman role had become a "significant duty" with a lot of responsibility, that the fund was now worth £2.9 billion, and that the current chairman had carried out the work required in 2021-22. Mr Smith added that the payment would come from the pension fund rather than the council. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
He was asked by Labour councillors David Phillips and Rob Stewart to clarify if the recommendation was to backdate the senior salary. Cllr Stewart said he was given to understand that it would not be backdated, but that he was not going to argue against it given Mr Smith's comments.
Mr Smith said it was unfortunate that the wording of the report meant the restrospective element could be inferred either way, which was why he had drawn attention to it. He added: "It seems to me not fair to not make it backdated for the year because the work has been done, and the whole charge does go to the pension fund."
Cllr Phil Downing, who serves on the pension fund committee, said the chairman's work "has really grown and grown". The Labour councillor congratulated Cllr Lloyd, who is standing down at the local Government elections in May, for the amount of work he had put into the role, including efforts to divest a big chunk of fossil fuel investments. "I think this (senior salary proposal) is in recognition of the extra work involved," said Cllr Downing.
Mr Smith said that the pension fund committee, which includes external stakeholder representation, had approved the proposal. A majority of councillors approved the recommendation, but some abstained and some opposed it.
Speaking afterwards, Swansea Conservatives leader, Cllr Lyndon Jones, said he did not think a senior salary should apply to the role, and that backdating it was "unacceptable".
Cllr Stewart told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "Following clarification of the advice from the chief finance officer no retrospective payment will be made, and the current chair, Cllr Lloyd, has been very clear he would not have accepted it." Cllr Jones said Cllr Lloyd's stance was "the honourable thing" to do.
What are senior salaries and do other councils pay pension fund committee leaders more?
Senior salaries are paid to the chairs of some council committees to reflect the breadth and scope of the work involved, but that hasn't applied to date for the Swansea pension fund committee. This makes Swansea an outlier.
There are seven other council pension fund committees in Wales which administer local Government pension schemes, like Swansea does. The report before full council said the chairs of four of these committees were paid a senior salary for the role, while the chairs of the other three already had a senior salary because they were cabinet members.
The discretionary payment, which has now been approved for the Swansea pension fund chair going forward, will only be paid when the post-holder doesn't have a senior salary. Cllr Clive Lloyd, the current committee chairman, doesn't have a senior salary although he did in the past when he was a cabinet member.
The report before councillors said the demands and complexity of the role of the pension fund committee chair had increased over the last 20 years, during which time the fund's value had soared from £500 million to £2.9 billion. There was more scrutiny and lobbying related to the fund's assets, it said, and a requirement to shape ethical investment strategies.
