Dear Greenwich Borough Council,

I am researching the fossil fuel investments made by UK Local Government Pension Schemes (LGPS) for an upcoming report by UK Divest. On publication, the report is likely to receive substantial interest from press and the elected representatives sitting on pension fund committees across the UK. Therefore can you please ensure the investment data you provide is as accurate as possible as our analysis will be fundamentally informed by it.

To complete this research, I require data on each investment that was held by Royal Borough of Greenwich Pension Fund on 31 March 2022, or the nearest possible date:

1. Investment names. Please provide the names of all investments held by the pension fund. For direct investments, please provide the names of individual investments such as specific stocks, bonds, and real estate units. For indirect investments (i.e. those held via a third party), please provide the names of investment vehicles, such as specific mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) and anything else. Note we do not need to know what each indirect investment vehicle invests in as we will determine this in the data analysis.

2. Investment identifiers. For listed investments (i.e. those traded on public exchanges), such as bonds and equities, please provide the International Securities Identifier Number (ISIN). For any investments that do not have an ISIN number, such as some alternative assets, please provide the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI). If an investment does not have an identifier, please provide an explanation.

3. Asset types. The asset type for each investment as reported by the pension fund, such as: real estate, cash, private equity, listed equity, sovereign bonds, corporate bonds etc.

4. Investment managers. The name of the entity which is responsible for the day-to-day management of each investment. For example, this could be the name of the entity which manages a specific investment fund such as Baillie Gifford, Legal & General, UBS etc. Note we do not need to know who is responsible for the overall governance of the LGPS or any pools it might belong to.

5. Investment values. The market value of each investment in pounds sterling (£) on 31 March 2022 or the nearest possible date. And please also give the total value of the pension fund.

We have created a read-only Google Sheet as a template for how we would like the data presented when you answer this request. You can view and download it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...

If possible, please use this Google Sheet when answering. Please note there are two tabs - 'summary' and 'data'. Please fill in both tabs. Using the template would help us accurately analyse the data provided.

If you respond promptly and to a satisfactory standard, we will willingly share our analysis with you prior to publication of our report, so you have the chance to comment and benchmark your pension fund against other UK LGPS.

I would like to receive this information in unlocked excel sheets without protected cells (.xls). If you have to password protect the excel sheets, please also provide the password to them. When considering the request for this data in excel format, please refer to Innes v Information Commissioner [2014] EWCA Civ 1086 (i), which allows a requester to express a preference for communication by a particular means, specifically: "an applicant's right to choose to have information provided to him in electronic form extends to a right to choose the software format in which it is embodied." (ii)

Please note:

Many public authorities release their contracts, minutes, and other information of interactions with private vendors in line with the Freedom of Information Act. The exemption for commercial interest under the Act (section 43) is a qualified exemption, which means information can only be withheld if it is in the public's interest. The public have an interest in knowing what the Pension Fund is investing in, the terms of contracts and the minutes of meeting with public authorities, whether or not public money changes hands immediately.

If you are relying on section 41 (the exemption for legal breach of confidence) then I would like to know the following:

* When these confidentiality agreements were agreed
* All correspondence and email in which these confidentiality agreements were discussed
* The precise wording of the confidentiality agreements.

I ask these questions because guidance issued by both the Lord Chancellor (draft guidance on FOI implementation) and the Office of Government Commerce (Model terms and conditions for goods and services) specifically state that public authorities should not enter into these types of agreements; they go directly against the spirit of the laws of disclosure. I would also point to the Information Commissioner's guidance on accepting blanket commercial confidentiality agreements: 'Unless confidentiality clauses are necessary or reasonable, there is a real risk that, in the event of a complaint, the Commissioner would order disclosure in any case.' (iii)

Finally, within the law of confidence there is also a public interest test. Therefore, the information should be disclosed in full. If any parts are redacted, they must be for information that can be proven to be a legal breach of confidence in court, and only then where secrecy can be shown to be in the public interest. These are difficult positions to argue when public money is at stake or where a public authority is offering a private company a monopoly to charge its stakeholders.

I reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to charge excessive fees, and understand that under the act, I am entitled to a response within 20 working days. I would be grateful if you could confirm in writing that you have received this request.

Yours faithfully,

Edward Jones

(i) Innes v Information Commissioner [2014] EWCA Civ 1086 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/...

(ii) Section 11 FOIA and the Form of a Request
https://panopticonblog.com/2014/08/01/se...

(iii) 'Freedom of Information Awareness Guidance 5: Commercial Interests' Office of the Information Commissioner, Page 10 https://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/pr...

Dear Mr White,

Many thanks for your response and help with this. Also many thanks for trying to provide all the data and using the Google template we provided - much appreciated.

There is one issue which I am hoping you could help me with.

In the data you sent there are no ISIN or LEI for the investments with Wilshire. Can you please ask the investment managers for the LEIs for these investments? If necessary, if the information is not held by the investment managers, can you request that they (or can you) use this LEI lookup tool to find the identifier information for the remaining investments: https://www.lei-lookup.com/record/ The problem with us using such a tool is that it is easy to make mistakes as many investments have several variations/similar names. So ideally someone who is familiar with the pension funds investments would do this to prevent mistakes and ensure we have the correct identifier for each investment.

For your convenience I am listing the required investments below:

Wilshire Asia Private Markets Fund VII, L.P.
Wilshire European Private Markets Fund VII, L.P.
Wilshire U.S. Private Markets Fund VII, L.P.

This would really help us accurately analyse the data provided, and fairly portray to what extent the pension fund invests in fossil fuels.

Yours sincerely,
Edward Jones