Railpen has secured planning consent for the redevelopment of 12 Smithfield in the City of London, with completion scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2028.

The project will deliver more than 122,000 square feet of office and amenity space, including private terraces, a rooftop garden and 11,400 square feet of retail, café and multifunctional space. Designed by Henley Halebrown, the development will retain and upgrade the existing structure, while targeting BREEAM Outstanding, EPC A, WELL Core Platinum, NABERS UK 5* and net-zero carbon in operation. Railpen, which manages the £34bn Railways Pension Scheme, said the project would support the wider regeneration of Smithfield, where £400m is being invested, including in the new London Museum. Railpen UK offices sector lead, Emily Atkinson, added that the scheme would deliver a “high-quality HQ workspace” with strong amenities and sustainability credentials. Railpen has appointed JLL and Newmark to market the building to prospective occupiers.

Smart Pension has reduced its average pension transfer time by 5.5 days during the past two years, bringing the average time taken to complete a transfer down to 12 days.

The master trust said the improvement followed changes to its transfer processes designed to improve efficiency and transparency for members. The announcement came one month after Smart Pension became a founding member of Pathfinder, a master trust-led steering group established to explore improvements to workplace pension transfers and support a more scalable market-wide process. Smart Pension chief operating officer, Sue Whittington, noted that master trusts required infrastructure and processes capable of meeting the scale and expectations of the modern workplace pensions market. “This is not just about speeding up the process,” she continued. “It is about making it efficient and transparent while ensuring savers have clear, complete information to make informed decisions about their future.”

LGPS Central has committed capital to Invesco Real Estate’s flagship European real estate credit fund as part of the continued diversification of its private credit portfolio.

The allocation will provide exposure to loans secured against high-quality property assets across the UK and selected European markets on behalf of LGPS Central’s 14 partner funds. Launched in 2022, the Invesco Commercial Mortgage Income - Europe Fund is an open-ended Luxembourg-domiciled vehicle and forms part of Invesco’s $132bn private-markets platform. The fund has 12 investors, including pension schemes and insurers, and recently committed around £82m across a London self-storage portfolio, a Madrid hotel asset and a Barcelona office. LGPS Central head of private markets and real assets, Nadeem Hussain, said the strategy met the pool’s requirements for stable income, strong credit protections and robust collateral. Invesco Real Estate delivered €710m of European real estate loans during the first five months of 2026, representing a record period for its European credit team.

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