In November 1997, the Audit Commission published its report on the operation of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), Retiring Nature: Early Retirement in Local Government. It proved to be a timely contribution to the debate on early retirement in the public sector in England and Wales. Its focus was on the use of local authorities - discretionary powers and practices relating to early retirement and ill-health retirement. The report showed that in some authorities, large numbers of individual decisions on early retirement had implications for the demands on resources in the future.
This update sets out the 1999 survey's findings; it also draws on original, but anonymised, data from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) and information from the Employers' Organisation for Local Government. It focuses, as did the original national report, on the use by Welsh and English local authorities of their discretionary powers in relation to early retirement under the LGPS, and to practices surrounding ill-health retirement. This report, however, does not look into the management and investment strategies of pension funds.
Included in this update:
- Changes since the publication of Retiring Nature
- Findings from auditors' reports and the Commission's 1999 survey
- Continuing the progress