The chairman of Harrow Council’s pension board has praised its latest report, which suggested the borough “performs well against the national benchmark”.

The report, presented by the council’s treasury and pensions manager, Iain Miller, showed that the fund hit the majority of its services targets last year.

Only in terms of notifying members of their retirement benefits and their actual ill health benefits within three days did it fall short – by about six per cent in both cases.

The pension fund, which is open to Harrow Council employees and those from other organisations such as colleges, academies or contractors, is part of the national Local Government Pension Scheme.

Richard Harbord, the chairman and independent member of the board, said: “It’s a very good report and the quality of data we have here is excellent.

“It’s extremely good going and shows that Harrow performs well against the national benchmark.”

He added that it was both “impressive” and “unusual” to have no breaches of law over the past year and praised the fund for “taking much more action” over potential legal issues.

Despite the positive nature of the report, the board agreed that there could still be more scrutiny on local authority schemes.

It is hoped that a member of the council’s pension fund committee will attend the next meeting, and an invite will be extended to the pensions regulator.

Mr Harbord noted that the board encourages everyone to undertake as much training as possible.

He said: “It’s important that we log our training, so we know what everyone has done, and we make sure we know what we are talking about.”

And he reassured Cllr James Lee, a new appointment, that meetings are “generally well-attended” when he pointed out the number of absentees.

One of these, the employer representative Sudhi Pathak, has resigned from his position and will be replaced in due course.