Writing to your local authority

Very few people contact local authorities about their investments, so any approach you make – possibly two or three letters or emails spread over several months – will certainly have an impact.

Gather initial shareholding figures

Our understanding of the shareholdings of your local authority pension fund, as well as their contact details, is available here.

Confirm the shareholdings

Contact the finance director of the local authority to find out if this is still the situation. As the finance director does not decide policy on investments, the emphasis should be on information gathering rather than on their investment policy. Also ask for a list of the members of the pension fund investment committee and for their contact details.

Write to the policy makers

In a local authority pension fund, investment policy should be decided by the pension fund investment committee, so the best place to start would be to write to the chair of that committee. Include:

• your understanding of the investments they hold.
• a statement of your concern about these investments.
• a request that the committee consider whether these investments are appropriate (you could also look at council publications or their website to see if they proclaim any 'community strategies' or principles that are obviously inconsistent with the arms trade. In this instance it would be entirely appropriate to ask how the pension fund reconciles this).
• a question that requires an answer. For example, ‘What action do they intend to take?’

Follow up your letter

What you do next very much depends upon the response. It may well take a few letters to establish the local authority’s investment policy and practice.

• If the response doesn’t address your points: You could write again, if necessary narrowing your letter down to a single question so that it is hard to avoid.
• If the response is dismissive: You could write to the other members of the pension committee to see if there is any wider support for your arguments.
• If the response focuses on ‘engagement’: Engagement is concerned with negotiating better company practice. While this may have benefits in some sectors, we do not think it is relevant to arms companies as the product and its sale and use are the problem. If the response does focus on engagement, ask how this approach might address the obvious problems associated with the arms industry.
• If you receive no joy from the investment committee: You could try writing to the leader of the council. In some cases a pension fund is comprised of a number of local authorities (for example Wolverhampton City Council administers the pension fund for the whole of the West Midlands), and in this case you could also write to the leaders of other relevant local authorities.

Make use of the office and experienced supporters

Please do ask us (email cleaninvestment@caat.org.uk) at any point if you would like our thoughts on how to proceed.

Let us know how you get on

Even if you don’t need any assistance, please let us know how you get on with your local authority. We would like to build a picture of which local authorities have yet to be approached and how much progress is being made.