DORSET COUNTY Council’s pension deficit has been revealed to stand at more than £300million.

The figure was revealed in a report slamming local authorities for the huge black hole in public sector finances.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has compared the pension assets held by each local authority in the country to their liabilities and discovered a national deficit of £54billion, which it claims taxpayers are ultimately liable for.

In Dorset the county council was found to have a deficit of nearly £305million, with assets of around £460million compared to liabilities of £765million.

The figure represents a deficit of £753 per head of population.

Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance Matthew Sinclair said: “The deficit in the Local Government Pension Scheme remains a ticking time bomb that’s being left for future generations of taxpayers to deal with.

“With an ageing population and a crisis in the public finances, generous final salary schemes like the LGPS are inflexible and too expensive, and need urgent reform. Councils should not take false comfort in the improvement in the stock market. Their pension liabilities continue to far outweigh their assets.”

Dorset County Council is one of 165 local authorities identified in the report as having a pension deficit of more than £100million, with Birmingham City Council top of the list at £1.3billion.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance is now calling on local government to accept pension reforms to make schemes more sustainable.

However, some of the TaxPayers’ Alliance figures have come under fire from public services union Unison, which has also slammed the group for attacking a local government pension scheme that allows low-paid public sector workers to save for their retirement.

Unison head of local government Heather Wakefield said: “The so-called TaxPayers’ Alliance should stop attacking the pension rights of low-paid public service workers such as dinner ladies and bin men, and concentrate on getting its facts straight. Back in reality, the local government pension scheme is a sustainable and affordable way of helping low-paid workers to save for their retirement.

“The average pension in local government is not at all gold plated.

“It is just £4,000 a year, dropping to just £2,600 for women.”

A spokesman for Dorset County Council, said: “While there is currently a forecasted excess of pension liabilities over pension fund assets, amounting to £305m, this figure is not a measure of the future cost to taxpayers.

“Market values and future predicted valuations can change each year, which has an influence on the forecasted deficit.

“The employer cost of the local government pension scheme is currently seven per cent of the council’s expenditure, only 30 per cent of which is funded by council tax.

“Deficits are growing because people are living longer and the UK is still recovering from the financial crisis in 2008 and the recession that followed.

“Work is taking place both locally and nationally to reform public sector pensions to make them more sustainable and affordable.”