Nearly £10bn of local government pension funds are still invested in fossil fuels, new research has found.

?A report, published by Platform and Friends of the Earth, said despite three-quarters of councils having declared a climate emergency, local government pensions had £9.9bn of investments in fossil fuel companies in 2019-20.

Local authority pension funds in Greater Manchester, Strathclyde and West Midlands accounted for one in five of all fossil fuel investments while Teesside, Dyfed and Dorset had the largest percentage of their assets invested in fossil fuels.

The analysis showed that fossil fuels represented 3% of the total value of the local government pension scheme.