A consultation on whether a public sector pension fund in the West Country should continue investing in arms will start in September.
The Avon Pension Fund, worth £6bn, manages the local government pension scheme for the former county of Avon and has 140,000 members from over 450 employers.
However, it has faced calls to divest from companies engaged in the arms trade following campaigners' warnings that their pensions were funding human rights abuses by Israeli forces in Palestine.
Initially, campaigners urged the fund to divest from companies specifically linked to Palestine. However, after legal concerns were raised about an investment strategy centred on a particular conflict, the Avon Pension Fund Committee considered divesting from all companies in the aerospace and defence sector.
In a meeting held in March, the committee voted 10-3 to maintain the status quo - but this decision remains provisional until the scheme's 140,000 members have been consulted.
The fund has now confirmed that a procurement process for someone to oversee the consultation has been finalised, with the survey set to launch in September.
The delay in starting the consultation until September is understood to be due to factors such as migration of administration systems, regulatory deadlines, changes to investment pooling, and the summer holiday period.
The committee is set to hold another public meeting in October or November, where it will review public feedback and make a final decision on whether to divest from the aerospace and defence sector.
The £6bn fund currently has £18m - 0.3% of its total assets - invested in aerospace and arms companies. The Avon Pension Fund's investments are part of a passive equity pool, known as the Brunel Fund, which spreads money across thousands of companies.
This fund was chosen for investment due to its climate credentials, rather than the pension fund directly purchasing shares in arms companies.
The Avon Pension Fund has made significant strides towards being environmentally friendly, choosing the Brunel Fund because it aligns with the 2015 Paris agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Brunel Fund already excludes businesses that manufacture controversial weapons such as cluster munitions and chemical weapons, or those that violate a UN principle requiring businesses to ensure they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Lockheed Martin and RTX have already been excluded from the fund's portfolios on these grounds.
When campaigners initially brought up the matter to the committee in December 2024, they received a "positive response."
Nick Dixon, head of the fund, expressed gratitude for their "moral compassion" and committee chair Paul Crossley (Southdown, Liberal Democrat) said: "From my own personal point of view, I have visited Palestine twice and have seen many of the issues that people have raised here."
However, the campaigners were later confronted with "a complete U-turn" regarding the meeting's earlier tone and position. At the March session, councillors cautioned that the same companies also provided armaments essential for Britain's defence and Ukrainian resistance against Russia.
Documents submitted for the meeting suggested that excluding aerospace and defence firms might compel the Avon Pension Fund to establish its own bespoke financial instrument rather than utilise the Brunel Fund.
In the March assembly, Tony Mayo, a children's social worker and Unison representative at Bath and North East Somerset Council, as well as member of the Avon Pension Fund, said: "The money that I have earned by trying tirelessly, at grave personal cost, to keep children safe is being used to fund the weapons that kill my brothers' and sisters' children abroad. For every day I work, I'm unwillingly contributing to genocide and war."
Both Bristol City Council and North Somerset Council have advocated for the pension fund to divest from firms manufacturing weaponry utilised by Israel in Gaza through the approval of resolutions.
