Financial Summaries

Scheme Account Summary

These summaries are provided to give a broad picture of the LGPS in England and Wales. They have been aggregated from fund accounts (both audited and unaudited) as available but are not in themselves subject to any form of audit nor are they set out in line with standard accounting practice. Aggregation into the headings shown will by necessity mean some individual fund figures are placed into the nearest equivalent financial heading or asset class. Where no accounts were available at the time of aggregation last years figures have been repeated for purposes of comparison between years. For source data please see the 2021 fund annual reports.

Breakdown of management charges

Scheme Assets Summary

*discrepancy due to inconsistencies in rounding between the fund accounts and net assets statements

Audit status 2020/2021

Please see the Fund annual report 2021 page; as at date of preparation, April 2022, the Scheme Advisory Board secretariat noted that 36 of the 88 audit opinions in respect of pension fund accounts of associated administering authorities remained outstanding. Where reports were not available, draft accounts were available in all but one instance. The audit of these accounts had been completed, but not signed without full authority opinion being given.

Notes

The LGPS Annual Report is based on each individual LGPS funds' statutory annual reports and audited financial statements as at 31 March, these been collated and published in one place. The intention is to build a complete and comparable set of annual reports for the scheme in its entirety, as a whole and for every fund. The annual accounts have been reviewed to draw out any information which is reported completely and consistently across all funds. At the highest level of financial reporting, the fund financial statements have been gathered together and totalled to produce an aggregated Scheme account and net assets statement.

The Statement of Accounts summarise the Scheme’s transactions for the year and its position at year end as at 31 March. The data used comes from the individual LGPS funds' financial statements which are prepared in accordance with the Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting in the United Kingdom (The Code). The Code is issued by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, CIPFA and is based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as amended for the UK public sector. The individual LGPS fund accounts have been prepared on an accruals basis in accordance with the Code, apart from transfer values which are accounted for on a cash basis in accordance with the Code.

The Net Assets Statement, similarly summarises the Scheme’s assets over the year and its position at year end as at 31 March.

The individual LGPS fund accounts do not take account of obligations to pay pensions and benefits which fall due after the end of the financial year, nor do they take into account the actuarial present value of promised retirement benefits. IAS 26 gives administering authorities the option to disclose this information by appending an actuarial report, prepared for this purpose. These statements are as at the most recent Scheme valuation date. In the case for 2021 annual reports, this is 31 March 2019.

Data limitations

It is important to note that the data contained in this LGPS Annual Report is based on the individual LGPS fund annual report and audited accounts. The SAB is reliant on the general accuracy of the fund annual reports without independent verification. Whilst the data have been checked for reasonableness and consistency, a full independent audit of the aggregated data has not been completed.

The charts, analysis and general commentary are based on the face accounts, or broad ‘high-level’ figures. Analysis of account notes demonstrated variations in depth of reporting and subjective interpretation of some accounting classifications.

These findings in analysing the more detailed notes sections of the annual reports will be shared with CIPFA and DLUHC in order to support their work in improving guidance on annual report and accounts, and collection of SF3 data. The information may also be used by the LGPS Advisory Board sub committees to help establish baseline datasets and to build on comparable metrics for assessing the financial health of each individual fund, and the scheme as a whole.