Firefighters threaten strikes in 10 Reform council areas in pensions row

20 comments

1. It’s pretty sad that we as a country are falling for Reform’s schtick when we’ve seen what Truss and Thatcher did to the country with policies more moderate than Reform.

2. Reform picking a fight with fire fighters… It’s a bold move cotten.

3. “the final salary pension schemes that firefighters have already paid into”

   Im not familiar with Firefighter pensions – is their pension final salary (defined benefit) and is it paid into?

   The assumption is that it’s similar to the HM forces one and currently subject to the McCloud judgement, but you never really hear anything about these specific pensions like one would with NHS etc.

4. > “But by managing the pensions schemes better to produce higher returns than the current woeful returns, as well as paying lower management fees to the City, we can save substantial sums for the council taxpayer

   But are we going to be able to put fires out when no one wants to be a fire fighter?

5. This appears to be linked the overarching policy decision on public sector pensions.

   Personally, I think there are undoubtedly better avenues of attack before we get to pensions. I’m sure there’s some local businessman who has been getting backhanders from councillors over the years that can be cut off first.

   Edit: I may have done some misrepresentation of my own. Seen response below for clarification of facts. I have edited this comment to not spread further potentially incorrect information.

6. I didn’t realize the fire brigade was on the local government pensions agreement, that’s interesting. I wonder how many other organisations Tice wound up with his mouthing off.

7. The left will do whatever they can to make sure Reform fail, don’t let them win

8. > Richard Tice last week said the 10 councils Reform UK now controls would reduce the generosity of pensions for recruits and give existing staff lower pay rises to cover the cost of funding their retirement

   Now the second part of that relating to pay might be possible, but has nobody (journalists, unions, etc.) looked at the law relating to local government pensions?

   That law is The Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations 2013 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2356/part/1/chapter/2 and it makes clear that every local government employee can choose to be a member of that scheme.

   So why isn’t anyone (journalists, unions, etc.) asking Tice how he will overcome that legislation.

9. Almost like Reform have no idea what they are doing
   Who’d have guessed.

   The party of populism doesn’t have a clue, when they actually have to do something with the reality of politics.

10. Firefighters took the UK government to court and won over the discrimination of 2015 pension reforms, reform are screwed. But it’s all a moot point as the councils have no independent authority to do any of this.

11. wtf is the news site? Won’t even let you click away after the “PLEASE PAY” pop up comes along.

12. They see the LGPS as being an easy target because it’s ‘council’ without realising that it’s a fully funded scheme, and ‘council’ covers an awful lot of job types of which many, many jobs are not that well paid and who the employees will not receive massive pensions.

13. Expect more of these with Reform. They just want to dodge more money to the wealthy.

14. “Reform”, more like Deform

    (I wish I could come up with a better delivery)

15. Just weird how quiet the comments are, where are all the Reform bots?

16. I work for a local council where Reform have taken the majority of the seats.

    Our CEO put an email out yesterday about Reforms pension statement and said without legislative change it’s all a load of nonsense.

17. Your pension should be given to our chums in the private sector, and it’s gone.

18. They are totally unsuitable and unqualified to run councils. How do they think they will achieve anything if their first action is to wage a war against their own employees?

19. Got what they wished for then? Reduced social and emergency services, but they will have lovely roads no doubt

20. Sadly too many people just care about the immigration boogeyman (which seems to always focus on the boats crossing the channel rather than the wider issues of immigration). They’ll vote reform in, the entire country will be complete shit. The reform voters will then say well the other parties should’ve offered more, and it’s their fault it’s shit.

    Labour will get back in not fix everything immediately and lose power again. Same cycle we always see.

    And it ignores the fact no matter what other parties promise they’ll vote for conservatives/reform.

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