{"id":18017,"date":"2012-11-02T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=18017"},"modified":"2012-11-02T09:00:11","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T09:00:11","slug":"the-time-for-pension-funds-to-invest-directly-in-regeneration-and-housing-has-arrived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/11\/02\/the-time-for-pension-funds-to-invest-directly-in-regeneration-and-housing-has-arrived\/","title":{"rendered":"The time for pension funds to invest directly in regeneration and housing has arrived"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A magazine called New Start <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cles.org.uk\/features\/can-council-pensions-fund-regeneration\/#&amp;panel1-1\" target=\"_blank\">has\u00a0featured\u00a0the following\u00a0statement\u00a0this week<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A housing scheme in Manchester is the latest development to fuel debate over the use of council pension schemes to invest in local projects.\u00a0Austin Macauley\u00a0assesses whether it\u2019s likely to open the floodgates<\/p>\n<p>The case for using England\u2019s council pension funds to benefit local economies just got stronger\u2026 to the tune of \u00a35bn. They are now worth a whopping \u00a3148bn, up from \u00a3143bn last year, according to\u00a0DCLG statistics released this month. Expect that figure to bandied around over the next 12 months at any forum where the future of council borrowing or investment in local regeneration is being debated \u2014 accompanied by the question: why don\u2019t we make more use of council pension funds?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is complicated and multi-faceted, but far too important to dodge.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when local authority resources are stretched like never before, when funds available for regeneration and other local projects are thin on the ground, and when even the cheapest and easiest source of funding \u2014 the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) \u2014 has become more expensive, why aren\u2019t councils looking at pension funds as a way to diversify their options?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It's a question <a href=\"http:\/\/www.neweconomics.org\/publications\/peoples-pensions\" target=\"_blank\">I have asked for a decade<\/a>. The time for an answer has arrived.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when conventional pension fund\u00a0investment\u00a0policy is simply guaranteed to lose people money in the UK because of inept management, market corruption and excessive charges why aren't pension funds being invested in things that we really need, like housing, where the payback over a period of, say, 25 years is exactly the sort of return a\u00a0pension\u00a0fund needs?<\/p>\n<p>Please read the article. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cles.org.uk\/features\/can-council-pensions-fund-regeneration\/#&amp;panel1-1\" target=\"_blank\">This is an idea whose time has come.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A magazine called New Start has\u00a0featured\u00a0the following\u00a0statement\u00a0this week: A housing scheme in Manchester is the latest development to fuel debate over the use of council<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/11\/02\/the-time-for-pension-funds-to-invest-directly-in-regeneration-and-housing-has-arrived\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pensions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}