Dorset Council and the county-wide Dorset Pension Fund, which involves other public bodies, are again being pressed to dis-invest from oil and gas.

Campaigner Caz Dennett says the time has come to invest in something for the good.

She has asked the fund, whose major contributors are Dorset Council and the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, if they are comfortable with investments in oil and gas which, she claims, can result in “childhood leukaemia and cancers, unliveable environments and sacrificed communities.”

She told the October Dorset Council meeting that she has now withdrawn her services as a senior safety consultant at Shell after deciding she could no longer tolerate what she said is their unwillingness to address the results of their actions on the environment.

Bournemouth Echo: Previous lobbies aimed at persuading the Dorset Pension Fund to disinvest from fossil fuels

Another public question to Dorset Council’s meeting came from Julie-Ann Booker on behalf of the Dorset Action on Pensions group.

She asked when and how Dorset Pension Fund members would be consulted on Government proposals to change local government schemes where they have investment in climate-related areas – and how this would be achieved by the November 24th deadline for the consultation.

Said Ms Booker: “On the assumption that Dorset Council will submit a response to the consultation, what arrangements are Dorset Council making to consult with Dorset pension fund members on the council’s submission, and what is being done to make pension fund members aware of the Government’s consultation and their right to make individual submissions?”

Deputy council leader Cllr Peter Wharf, who sits on the Dorset Pension Fund committee, said he would take advice on the issues, adding that a review of how the fund invested was currently underway with a report due by the middle of next year.

Earslier in the year a meeting the pension fund committee was told that, through its investment managers, there had already been a ‘substantial’ move away from oil and gas holdings and towards ‘green’ investments.

The committee has been lobbied several times over the past two years on what campaigners see as immoral or environmentally harmful fund holdings.