By Professor John Clancy and Professor David Bailey
20th February 2026

£1.1 billion for Bankers, Not Brummies.
Gormless fund chiefs point to the WRONG £1.1 billion!

£1.1 billion handed over in Management Expenses

RKBC Council Pension Fund cuts employer contributions to 0% for NEXT THREE YEARS, as West Midlands Pension Fund still demands 16% on every payslip.

As press releases go, it couldn't have been more disastrous.

The Labour Chair of the West Midlands Pension Fund Committee and the Combined Authority Mayor attempted haplessly to promote an apparent Investment by the fund of £1.1 billion in the West Midlands economy. Not in one go of course, but...you know... eventually. Trickled out over the course of the next decade.

This is misdirection. Look at this shiny thing over here…don’t look at the massive scandal over there.

It’s a £22B fund. £1.1B is a tiny allocation: just 5% of the bloated fund's assets.

You might rightly have assumed the fund would have already invested that kind of money across the region. The region its entire wealth comes from in the first place. But no. They might get there at some point in the the 2030s.

They are not telling the voters of the West Midlands of the real scandal leading up to this election: that they handed over the same amount, £1.1B, in management expenses since 2016.

Labour and the WMPF prioritises Bonkers Bankers’ Bonuses, not West Midlands pensioners, employees, employers, and taxpayers

Over the last 10 years, each year the contributions of employers and employees have fully covered the pensions and lump sums paid to pensioners.

So It’s a pension fund that doesn’t actually pay out any pensions! That’s deliberate. It just grows and grows for the benefit of bankers and the Investment Banking sector, which sector has policy-captured the Local government Whitehall elites.

Labour’s priorities are to reward bankers first and West Midlands taxpayers last.

Labour will lose control of the WMPF in May, and so will Wolverhampton lose control of the fund, thank goodness.

It might still be in control of the administering authority, but its Labour Councillors will be in a minority on the committee and lose control of the WMPF.

So Labour will not be making the investment decisions anyway. This press release is an irrelevance, and is anyway just a heavy-handed, poorly-disguised partisan political statement.

After the election, there’ll be a new sheriff in town and in charge.

Every council, every state school, every FE college is in the the West Midlands Pension Fund for their entire non-teaching staff bodies. Most of the universities are. So are the pensions of non-uniformed staff of the West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Fire and Rescue. It's not just about council workers.

Council workers paid out of their council's general fund are now a minority of the the WMPF. The vast majority of the fund consists of state-funded employers outside the councils.

Employers across the West Midlands should be paying 0% in employer contributions for the next 3 years because of the stonking great £11B surplus at the fund. It's not a holiday. They’ve already pre-paid their contributions for the next three years, having paid completely unnecessary mega-contributions over the last 10 years at least.

The Kensington and Chelsea LGPF fund’s councillors (with a similar surplus position) have set 0% for the next 3 years in THEIR funding strategy statement and investment documents - which gets the surplus back to the councils and employers. As it recertified contributions at 0% for this current year, that will be four years at 0%.

In our next blog we will be explaining the cogent, detailed reasoning their councillors, backed by intelligent, financially literate officers, used to hold contributions at 0%.

The press release from WMPF and the CA Mayor should have been that the taxpayers were going to get the £11B back they are owed by this fund. And that would have been a much better look for the mayor.

That would be £400m straight back into the revenues of Birmingham City Council, for a start.

Birmingham City Council is being asked to pay 16.5% on every payslip for the next 3 years instead.

It’s picking the pockets of Brummie Taxpayers whilst the fund hoards an £11B surplus owned by those very taxpayers. And these overpayments will actually increase the surplus further!

It’s Alice in Wonderland stuff.

Tony Mcardle, Birmingham's do-nothing, financially-illiterate Chief Commissioner, has sat back and done nothing but protect the interests of the Local Government Establishment Elite in Whitehall, of which he is a member. And they are, and he is, protecting a scandalous status quo at local and national level.

He represents that elite in Birmingham. He will not challenge as he should the scandalous mismanagement of this fund, especially its expenses.

He has not challenged the squandering of tax payer’s assets and wealth, whilst draining literally £billions of resources from across the services of all its councils, every state school, every FE college, most of our universities, and our Police and Fire Services. Best value,eh?

Special schools have actually been most affected proportionately. Mcardle has not stood up for them. That’s a disgrace.

Councillor Jaspal should be resigning over his catastrophic stewardship of a fund which has hoarded £11B of taxpayers money: it has literally twice what it should have.

The press release laughably mentioned that 'The Fund has an obligation to protect its members’ money and deliver best value for them'.

Let's be clear: the £11B SURPLUS in the fund is NOT the members’ money, it’s taxpayers money. The surplus is owned by the employers (i.e. the tax payers) and must come back to them. Now.

Protect the first £11B half of the fund which is what the fund needs to pay the future pensions of every current pensioner and every current employee, yes, of course.

The rest is SURPLUS and the law says it must come back. The WMPF wants to hoard it, and trickle-feed it back over decades.

The shocking result of this valuation should have led to Councillor Jaspal resigning, not celebrating. So should Executive Director Rachel Brothwood resign.

We suspect Councillor Jaspal will find someone else chairing the fund after the elections, and from a different party.

Labour and particularly Wolverhampton Labour have let the taxpayers, the pensioners and the employers of The West Midlands down.

They deserve to get booted out, and end the decades of mismanagement of the West Midlands Pension Fund by them.