The £8bn British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme (BCSSS) has appointed BlackRock as its fiduciary manager, it announced today (1 July).
On the scheme’s website, the trustees said the decision was made to help manage BCSSS’s continuing maturity. The defined benefit pension scheme has more than 39,000 members, the majority of whom are now retired.
“The scheme has been maturing over many years, with a growing proportion of members now retired and drawing their pensions,” the trustees said in a statement.
“That means the scheme needs to balance several things at once: paying pensions from investment income, keeping funding stable, and making sure assets continue to grow over the long term.”
Cheryl Agius, chair of the BCSSS trustee board, said BlackRock’s “expertise, scale and experience working with some of the UK’s largest pension schemes make it well placed to support the scheme now and in the future”.
Under the arrangement, BlackRock will advise the trustee board on investment strategy and take on responsibility for day-to-day portfolio management. The trustees retain responsibility for setting the investment strategy and managing risks.
According to BCSSS’s latest annual report, BlackRock already manages substantial fixed income and equity mandates for the pension scheme, worth more than £2bn in total as of 31 March 2025.
Coal Pension Trustees, a separate organisation set up to support the trustees of both BCSSS and the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme, continues to provide support services to the trustee board.
Separately, last week, the BCSSS trustees announced that they were due to meet Chris MacDonald, the government’s minister for industry, later in July as discussions over the scheme’s surplus-sharing arrangements continue.
At a previous meeting in February, they proposed that rules be introduced or amended to allow for “clear valuations” that indicate the surplus or deficit position of the scheme, as well as to allow trustees to use 100% of any surplus to boost pension payments. The trustees have also asked for powers to distribute any surplus “when it arises, rather than waiting for the next three-yearly valuation”.
