Worcestershire fund admits data error over £100,000 pensions

The actual number of pensions above £100,000 being paid by the Worcestershire Pension Fund is two – and neither is a former Worcestershire County Council employee.

The fund, which manages the Local Government Pension Scheme in the county, has apologised for its mistake, which was made in response to a Freedom of Information request from The Telegraph.

That figure had already been reported by The Telegraph before the mistake was picked up, along with two other incorrect statistics.

The fund said it had 588 pensioners receiving pensions above £50,000 in 2025/26 when it actually had 88.

Of these, 23 are former county council employees.

It had also told The Telegraph the average annual pension paid to its members in the 2025/26 financial year was £8,000 when, in fact, it was £5,839.

A spokesperson for Worcestershire Pension Fund said: "We have identified data, supplied in response to a Freedom of Information request (FOI), was incorrect due to human error during the preparation of our response.

"Duplication in figures resulted in considerably higher numbers being quoted for which, we have both apologised for and shared the correct data.

"We can confirm that this unusual error was limited to the FOI dataset and does not affect pension payments, member records, funding, governance, financial reporting, or investment reporting."

Worcestershire Pension Fund is a funded pension scheme with assets of more than £4.5 billion and is entirely self-financing.

Pension payments are met from employer and employee contributions together with the investment returns generated on those assets rather than council tax income.

It has more than 70,000 members and more than 22,000 pensioners, according to its latest report.