Westminster City Council employees have a gender pension gap of 18.7%, less than half the 34.7% recorded across the wider Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), according to new research.

The study, Making pensions exciting: closing the diversity pension gap in the LGPS, found women at Westminster had accrued around 81p in pension benefits for every £1 accrued by men, compared with 65p across the LGPS as a whole.

The research was carried out by Investors for Purpose, co-sponsored by the City of Westminster Pension Fund, Hymans Robertson and the LGPS Scheme Advisory Board.

The research revealed a more complex picture when ethnicity, disability and age are considered alongside gender. Asian and Black women had accrued more pension benefits than men from the same ethnic backgrounds, while White women recorded the largest gender gap. Members from ethnically diverse backgrounds had accrued 30.3% less than White members overall, though researchers noted there is no official LGPS-wide ethnicity benchmark for comparison.

Charlotte O'Leary, chief executive of Investors for Purpose, welcomed Westminster's role in the research and called for the LGPS to develop a scheme-wide ethnicity pension gap benchmark to help employers track progress.

Gerald Almeroth, executive director, Finance & Resources, Westminster City Council, said: ‘As a Scheme Employer within the City of Westminster Pension Fund, Westminster City Council was proud to support this work by providing employer data and insight.

‘The findings will help strengthen our understanding of where pension gaps exist, what drives them and how employers, funds and other stakeholders can work together to improve engagement, inform policy development and ensure more people can fully benefit from the valuable retirement security offered by the LGPS.’