Jul 15, 2026 · 25 min · 10 segments
In this episode of our LGPS Interviews series, we sit down with Mark Smith, Head of the Oxfordshire Pension Fund and newly appointed Senior LGPS Officer, to unpack what the role really involves day to…
Mark SmithGuest
Thomas ParkerHost
Nick ReeveHost
And like you say, like you said in the introduction, we we've been talking about this for a little while.
now got the job and can see you know what it means day to day and also hopefully useful for some of the people that are going to take this on in the future some of the funds that are still kind of deciding on who's going to take that role so hopefully that's a that's a useful interview and I thought was interesting but there was quite a few other things that we talked about you talked about as well so what was your kind of highlights from that time?
The biggest one I thought, because it's kind of the conversation that's been running for a while, and dare I say it, it's slightly creeping up on us.
But with everything else that's been going on, it's sort of slightly under-discussed, which is local government reorganisation, or LGR, if you want to use the fancy acronym, and how he, while he has looked at... decisions particularly from surrey um over the past sort of few weeks he hasn't really ruled anything out and he's looking at other sort of potential options um the conversation around the independent person was very interesting um obviously that's going to be a huge new role for um for the lgbs and in the lgbs so it was good to get his uh get his insight on that how about you nick
Yeah, I thought that local government reorganisation was interesting because, I mean, I haven't followed this particular aspect as closely as you have, but I remember years ago, this was pre-pooling, writing about Oxfordshire being involved with a couple of other LGPS funds of a potential kind of hookup.
Um, and they were talking about bringing some of their pensions, I think shared pensions, uh, services, that kind of thing.
Um, so it was interesting to kind of see that that is, you know, that's come around again.
And like you say, like you said in the introduction, we we've been talking about this for a little while.
now got the job and can see you know what it means day to day and also hopefully useful for some of the people that are going to take this on in the future some of the funds that are still kind of deciding on who's going to take that role so hopefully that's a that's a useful interview and I thought was interesting but there was quite a few other things that we talked about you talked about as well so what was your kind of highlights from that time?
The biggest one I thought, because it's kind of the conversation that's been running for a while, and dare I say it, it's slightly creeping up on us.
But with everything else that's been going on, it's sort of slightly under-discussed, which is local government reorganisation, or LGR, if you want to use the fancy acronym, and how he, while he has looked at... decisions particularly from surrey um over the past sort of few weeks he hasn't really ruled anything out and he's looking at other sort of potential options um the conversation around the independent person was very interesting um obviously that's going to be a huge new role for um for the lgbs and in the lgbs so it was good to get his uh get his insight on that how about you nick
Yeah, I thought that local government reorganisation was interesting because, I mean, I haven't followed this particular aspect as closely as you have, but I remember years ago, this was pre-pooling, writing about Oxfordshire being involved with a couple of other LGPS funds of a potential kind of hookup.
Um, and they were talking about bringing some of their pensions, I think shared pensions, uh, services, that kind of thing.
Um, so it was interesting to kind of see that that is, you know, that's come around again.
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