STOP digging.

That’s the traditional remedy proffered to the man who finds himself at the bottom of a nasty great hole.

And maybe the Hampshire Pension Fund, which finds itself with a very big hole indeed, should put down the spade and step away from the excavator.

In fact, when you are talking £1.5 billion, big doesn’t really cut it.

In an age when billions are tossed around by a debtaddicted government like loose change, it’s easy to forget exactly what a massive sum of cash this is.

And, like its celestial cousin, the black hole at the heart of the retirement dreams of 46,000 county workers and 27,000 pensioners, is busily sucking in everything that comes within its orbit.

Only here it’s taxpayers’ cash rather than stardust.

It cost the equivalent of £215 for every household in the county (although much of that comes from central government) just to fund the increased contributions to the scheme and that’s when the hole was a mere £700-odd million. Now it’s likely doubled in size (see page 44+45).

It’s so big in fact that it should force us to entirely re-think the way we fund the pensions of our public servants.

The Hampshire Pension Fund is not alone. The deficit for the UK’s public sector pensions stands at an estimated £1.2 trillion – equivalent to £20,000 for every man woman and child.

There has to be a better way.

These are great pensions: The gold standard and a deserved full stop to a frequently poorly-paid career of public service. These are dinner ladies, firefighters, beat sergeants, carers and myriad council workers.

They deserve security and a comfortable old age.

But there are today question marks over the viability of the entire system and a very real risk that it could come crashing down or bankrupt us all.

Flawed assumptions about the likely length of modern human life combined with the vagaries of the stock market and botched investment decisions have long led businesses big and small to reject the model.

In the last few weeks IBM – one of Hampshire’s biggest employers – announced plans to shut its final salary scheme to understandable howls of outrage from the little guys at Big Blue.

BP, Barratt Homes, Barclays Bank and Morrisons are other big names to recently add themselves to an already extensive list of employers abandoning the model.

A survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, accountants, shows that only a quarter of employers offering final-salary pensions intend to keep the schemes open to existing members.

Why? Simple: They can’t afford to keep on funding them.

And, ultimately, neither can we.