Local pensions campaigner dies

Les Collard, who fought a long but ultimately unsuccessful battle for better pensions for hundreds of ex-workers at a Hereford factory, has died in his mid-eighties.

Mr Collard was among former employees of Special Metals Wiggin (SMW), based off Holmer Road to the north of the city, who found their pensions frozen at mid-1990s levels.

Having retired from the company in 1992 after more than 30 years’ service, he was nominated by colleagues to become a trustee of the company pension fund.

But despite years of campaigning he was never granted this, leaving the fund board with only company appointees.

Mr Collard said in 2023 that the company, which was taken over by US conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway in 2016, “is waiting for its older ex-workers to die” so it could take back millions of pounds sitting in its pension pot.

Currently owned by PCC UK Global Holdings, it had a turnover to the end of 2023 of $178 million (£140 million).

Hereford MP Jesse Norman, who tried for 17 years to put Mr Collard’s case, said that having been a champion local chess player in his youth, “he brought a chess master’s focus, ingenuity and determination to the task”.

“It is a huge sadness, and a huge injustice, that his efforts were never met with success,” the MP said.

“But it is the measure of his heroism that he never gave up the fight.”