A FROME district councillor has hit out at Somerset County Council’s pension fund investments after claiming they lost over £800,000 in the four months following October last year.
Mendip District Councillor Shane Collins, who represents Frome’s Keyford Ward and leads the East Mendip Green Party, is campaigning for the county council to pull fossil fuel investments out of its pension fund.
Cllr Collins said, “Figures show that Somerset’s County Pension fund has lost £872,243 on investments in coal, gas and oil in just four months.
“We hope this haemorrhaging of money due to the pension fund’s investments in fossil fuels, will not affect the pensions of thousands of county council pension holders.
Cllr Collins told Frome Times he had asked the pension fund about the values of six fossil fuel companies it holds stock in – BP, Shell, Petrobas, EDF, Halliburton and Suncor.
Figures showed the investments – worth over £40million at the start of the period – returned a net loss of over £800k between October 2015 and February 2016.
The district councillor continued, “The total pension fund fossil fuel investment is £121.5million, making the actual figure much higher than the loss of £872,243 when all other fossil fuel investments are taken into account.
“We have been to various pension fund meetings asking them to divest from fossil fuels within five years and make no new fossil fuel investments.
“We also presented a petition signed by over 700 people. We have had no positive response but the petition is growing and I encourage people to sign it.
“These investments will lose much of their value when fossil fuel companies are compelled to leave 80% of their reserves in the ground – which they must be compelled to do if we’re to have any chance of preventing catastrophic climate change.
“We urge the Pension Fund Committee to commit to divesting themselves of these investments within five years. Their current position is not only jeopardising our children’s future, but also putting local people’s pensions at risk.”
For more information about cllr Collins’ divestment campaign search ‘Somerset’ online at campaigns.gofossilfree.org
