THE leader of Bolton’s Tory group believes the council’s pension liabilities are a “ticking time bomb”

An external audit report compiled by accountants KPMG says there is a risk that methods used to calculate the authority’s pension contributions are “not reasonable”.

Conservative chief Cllr Greenhalgh told a meeting of the council’s audit committee that the line “filled him with horror”.

He said: “There is an ostrich-in-the-sand situation here, it is a position that is unsustainable.”

And he added that efficiencies made by Bolton Cares, a not-for-profit company created by the council to deliver adult care services, were largely due to new employees entering a different pension scheme.

He said: “That’s the reason we put it at arm’s length. We are all kidding ourselves if we don’t think a huge percentage of the savings is from the pensions.”

And fellow Tory councillor Martyn Cox also expressed concern.

He said: “This is the single biggest area of long term risk that local authorities face and if they don’t face up to it will find themselves in enormous difficulties. Anyone that thinks the Local Government Pension Scheme is sustainable in the long term is deluding themselves.

"More and more council resources will have to go into it if it's to pay the promised benefits to future recipients."

However borough treasurer Sue Johnson said it was a ‘theoretical risk’ flagged up by KPMG.

She added: “The Greater Manchester Pension Fund is very experienced, there are a very experienced set of actuaries that absolutely want to make sure the assumptions they use are accurate.

"They won’t be swayed by anyone saying if they did something different contributions could come down. They take into account industry data, birth rates and death rates to come up with a actuarial view on of what state of funding is and therefore contribution rates that individual authorities should be paying.

"We discuss it with Greater Manchester treasurers on a regular basis. If there was a unanimous view that the rate of contributions could come down, we would welcome that, but not in a way that would put the pension scheme in jeopardy.”