Council workers should retire later, switch their pensions to ones based on career average rather than final salary, and contribute more if the local government pension scheme is to survive, the chief of one of the biggest local authority funds will warn on Friday.

Mike Taylor, chief executive of the London Pensions Fund Authority, said the barrage of criticism aimed at local authority pensions by parts of the media and anti-tax groups – that they are “gold plated, outdated and unaffordable” – has led to calls to scrap them completely.