Birmingham City Council and other employers whose workers are in the West Midlands Pension Fund have a small legal window of opportunity to force the fund to reconsult on its 31 March 2026 valuation report, and its associated three year certification of employer contributions until 2029.

So it needs to move quickly and lawyer-up quickly.

It needs to lodge a judicial review of the valuation and certification substantially on the grounds that the consultation of all employers required under the regulations was not a genuine consultation. This will need to be by the of the month.

The relief would be that the consultation and certification be restarted and the certification cancelled. In the interim any money paid since March 31st 2026 by employers should be returned and placed in escrow outside the administering authority budgets to which further contributions due would also be paid pending recertification.

This enables the opportunity then to rewrite the funding strategy statement and investment strategy statements (which are in any event meant to be kept under review, not just once every three years) which will then necessitate a new certification of what every employer’s contributions should be.

Birmingham City Council could and should join with all of the other Met authorities to bring the same action for judicial review together. And if Birmingham City Council doesn't, one or more of the others could. Any FE college, academy, university, could. Richard Parker as CA mayor could. Indeed any one of the hundreds of employers in the fund could. Birmingham, the other Mets and Wolverhampton City Council need to avoid this.

Alternatively, Wolverhampton City Council should accept that the game is up and restart the consultation process, rewrite the documents and recertify. It can do so under Reg 64A of its own volition. The obvious outcome is a 0% percent employer contribution for the next three years, which it should indicate is likely. BCC should lodge the judicial review now, in any event.

It should outline why what in non-legalese would be referred to as a sham consultation. The consultation went through the motions but was never at any stage meaningful.

In particular,

1.Wolverhampton City Council as administering authority of the West Midlands Pension Fund through its Pension Fund Committee misdirected itself in that it:

 (a) did not sufficiently explain or did not address at all through the consultation upon the 2025 Valuation for its Pension Fund the impact upon each employer’s contributions of:

  (i) the introduction and size of the “surplus buffer”.

  (ii) the choice of different discount rates

  (iii) the prudence levels chosen

  (iv) the level of administration expenses

  (v) the level of investment management fees

  (vi) different assumptions for inflation, and benefit increases

 (b) did not sufficiently explain or did not address at all through the consultation how the combinations at (a) (i)-(vi) above would affect each employer’s contributions.

 (c) did not sufficiently explain or did not address at all through the consultation the impact on each employer’s contributions of a range of different choices in each of the categories in para (a) above.

 (d) did not sufficiently explain or supply for each employer the resulting monetary figure for the expected employer contributions of different combinations of the factors in a) above, by using the expected payroll baseline figures which it holds

 (e)did not sufficiently explain to each employer that the factors in (a) above were choices to be made by it, the administering authority, not actuarial or regulatory requirements.

 (f) did not sufficiently explain how other administering authorities at previous valuations had made different judgments on the factors in (a) above and how differently the employer contributions of similar employers with similar employee profiles were as a result.

 (g) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address the rationale behind introducing a surplus buffer when none had existed prior to this valuation, and the impact on the employer contributions

 (h) did not sufficiently explain to the employer or address at all the surplus return policy adopted under the valuation, or its rationale

 (j) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all that the surplus return policy was a choice for the administering authority and not determined by regulation and how different choices in the policy would impact upon each employer’s contributions, in particular the choice of duration over which a surplus would be returned.

 (k) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all the impact upon employer contributions of different policy choices and surplus return durations relating to surplus return

 (l) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish each employer’s funding surplus at the date of valuation and the size of the funding surplus or funding deficit depending on the choices made at (a) above

 (m) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all that the contributions of each employer and its employees were made under regulations and the current and future payments of benefits from the Local Government Pension Scheme are paid out under the same regulations by the administering authority regardless of the size of the fund and so employees are not beneficiaries of a defined benefit pension fund and would pursue unpaid benefits under regulations from the administering authority corporately, not its pension fund

 (n) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish the funding surplus or funding deficit figure for each employer had different choices been made at  a) above

 (p) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish each employer’s or the entire fund’s funding deficit or funding surplus Had the discount rate used in the valuation had been applied in the previous three valuations so employers could assess the impact and the history of prior judgments by the administering authority on resulting employer contributions

 (q) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish the gross annualised investment returns and net annualised investment returns after fees for the fund for the 5, 10, 20 and 30 years prior to the consultation and how these figures related to the discount rate used to value liabilities for this valuation and previously

 (r) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish the investment returns achieved by other administering authorities in the LGPS or the average returns achieved across the UK LGPS in England and Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland

 (s) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all or publicly publish the advice from the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB)it must have regard to under regulations as to discount rates being applied by actuaries consistently being incorrect and underestimating LGPS investment returns and why the long-term Annualised average investment return rate advised by SAB was not used as the fund's discount rate to value funding liabilities

 (t) did not include updated investment return figures since the valuation date of 31st March 2025, and why it did not use those updated figures for this latest valuation or the calculations of employer contributions as it could have done

 (u) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all how different actuaries in different funds have calculated different employer contributions for employers with highly similar employee profiles and have made different decisions under a) above and with regard to surplus calculation and return.

 (v) did not sufficiently explain to employers or address at all that actuarial advice could have been sought by the administering authority outside the concentrated four actuarial firms which are used habitually by The UK LGPS, Hymans Robertson, Barnett Waddingham, Aon and Mercer but which firms are not required to be used

(w)  did not offer alternative and contrary challenger advice from another actuary outside the four funds at (v)above for context and consideration by employers, and that other actuaries often and regularly give different advice on the matters referred to under (a) above which could substantially change the employer contributions given under this valuation by this administering authority

 2.  As the decisions made in the funding strategy statement and the investment strategy statement decided by the administering authority directly impact upon the administering authority’s budget, assets and liabilities and so are a finance Committee decision only members of that administering authority should have voted on the contents of the Funding Strategy Statement and the investment Strategy Statement and misdirected itself in allowing otherwise.

 3. The Administering authority misdirected itself in that its officers did not sufficiently advise or did not address at all the public law fiduciary duties of the voting members of the administering authority's pension fund committee in particular of their public law fiduciary duties to the council taxpayer or wider taxpayers and to the state employers in the fund.

Whilst I am a Solicitor of the Supreme Court I am no longer a practising solicitor and do not hold myself out to be such.  I do not hold the above to be the advice of an acting solicitor. Anyone or any body wishing to bring judicial review proceedings as per the above should not rely solely on this advice and should seek further independent legal advice.