The total membership of the main public sector pension scheme had grown by more than 1,000 in a year.

Details are given in the latest annual report and accounts for the government’s unified pension scheme for the year up to the end of March 2023.

The report will be laid before the October sitting of Tynwald.

It shows that the total membership of the scheme - including active, deferred and pensioner members - has risen from 19,516 at March 31, 2022 to 20,523 12 months later.

The number of active members has grown in that period from 10,083 to 10,493. At the end of March 2021, the figure was 9,879 and total membership was 19,040.

In June this year, the Treasury Minister said that the government pension schemes are now on a sustainable footing.

Dr Alex Allinson said that reforms made since 2017, which have reduced future benefits and increased members’ contributions, have had a positive effect and ‘significantly improved the long term sustainability of the schemes going forward’.

Annual reports and accounts for the pension schemes of teachers, police and judiciary will also be laid before the October Tynwald.

An actuarial valuation of the unified scheme calculated its past service liabilities as at the end of March 2022 to be £1,974.1m, up from £1,740.6m in March 2019.

The scheme is unfunded, meaning that active members pay contributions based on their pensionable pay, with the balance of cost being met mainly by the Manx government.

Members’ normal contributions totalled £23.484m in 2023, up from £21.883m the previous year, while employer contributions rose from £43,664m in 2022 to £45,887m last year.

But benefits - including pensions and lump sums - shot up over the same period from £86,053m to £92,332m.

A 2019 report concluded that the legacy funding gap, the difference between employee and employer contributions and the expenditure required to meet future pension and related payments, is expected to rise to £72m by 2035-36.

It found that government funding will need to increase annually, reaching a forecast £206m to cover these pension payments by that same year.

The public service employees pension reserve was exhausted in 2022-23 and since then all future government funding will have to be met from general reserves.

Back in 2013, the overall public sector pensions liability stood at £2.1bn. But in 2020-21 it rose by more than £1bn to reach a record £4.8bn - although much of that increase was due to an actuarial loss.

Then thanks to actuarial gains, the liability dropped to £4.5bn in 2021-22 and then fell sharply the following year to £2.9bn.