Some funds have raised with the Board the increasing prevalence of requests for information about the responsible investment policies of administering authorities. These may come from interested scheme members or activist groups and can be “round robin” requests that are made to all LGPS funds with a view to collating information across the scheme (and making comparisons between funds’ responses).

As public authorities, there are duties on all administering authorities to be open and transparent about their policies and actions. However, the resources available to deal with requests are not unlimited and there will be occasions where cost, commercial sensitivity or other considerations will outweigh the public interest in releasing information. Further guidance on this is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Support in how to respond to these requests, especially if they become onerous or vexatious, should be sought from the authority’s legal and FOI advisers.

If the new climate reporting duties had been brought in by the Government, as consulted on last year, from 1st April 2023 then that may have helped authorities currently considering the request from Carbon Tracker by putting, or at least having a plan to put, a large amount of information into the public domain which may have helped address some of the requests for information that are being received. Despite the delays in DLUHC concluding that consultation, the Board would recommend that all funds consider having a proactive publication scheme in place for climate data, and their stewardship activities, to minimise the volume of ad hoc requests that they have to field.