UK - The value of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) in England fell by 2% over the year to March 2008, government figures have revealed.

Statistics compiled by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) revealed the 81 English administering authorities saw expenditure on pension benefit rise by 10% to £5.2bn (€6.64bn) between 2006/07 and 2007/08.

The annual figures revealed the majority of the expenditure - £4.1bn - was spent on paying pensions or annuities, while the authorities also reported increased spending on retirement lump sums of 79% in two years - from £581m in 2005/06 to £1.04bn in 2007/08 - following changes to LGPS regulations allowing members to take more of their benefits as a lump sum.

Government figures meanwhile confirmed despite a 5% increase in the income generated from investments, reaching £3.2bn, the total value of the LGPS in England fell 2% from £122.4bn at the end of March 2007 to £119.9bn in 2008.

In 2007/08, the report highlighted 63% of the LGPS income resulted from employers' and employees' contributions, equivalent to around £6.6bn, while 30% of the annual income came from the fund's investments which yielded around £3.2bn.

The figures also revealed the number of deferred pensioners in the English LGPS exceeded the one million mark - a rise of 52% from the 694,000 deferred members in 2003/04.

But while the pension scheme, which has 1.66 million active members, also reported a 7% increase in the number of pensioners over the past five years the DCLG highlighted that for the first time the number of deferred members now exceeds the number of pensioners.

The figures from the DCLG follow new research from the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) that revealed the cost of pension spending will increase by 40% in the next 20 years, and that despite recent reforms public sector pensions are still three times higher than the average defined contribution scheme.

If you have any comments you would like to add to this or any other story, contact Nyree Stewart on + 44 (0)20 7261 4618 or email nyree.stewart@ipe.com