Local government staff, in delivering public services, do one of the most important jobs in the country. They carry this out with immense professionalism, commitment and hard work, driven by a spirit of public service. It is right that they are properly rewarded, including benefiting from a good pension scheme. This pension scheme needs to be fair to our staff, and to the employers, and to council taxpayers. However, our current scheme is increasingly unsustainable and economically unviable. In explaining the growing problem, some people point to the pension holidays in the early 1990s, others highlight the chancellor's advance corporation tax raid on pension funds from the late 1990s. But the greater, underlying cause of the problem is that compared with 40 years ago, people are now working rather fewer years and living considerably longer.
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