Local Authority Pensions

The FT has been doing a series of articles, such as this one, on local authority pension schemes.  This looks like an area where local authorities could achieve real savings without impacting on services.  As well as demanding lower rates from fund managers, there really seems no good reason why each authority has to have its own scheme, rather than just merging them.  Of course, a problem with the Brent scheme is that historically it has been so underfunded that merging with Brent may not be an attractive proposition.