An apology was received from Liz Furey (Employer representative).

Members are reminded that they should declare any interests which may lead to conflicts of interest in the subject area or any specific agenda item of this meeting.  A conflict of interest is defined as a financial or other interest which is likely to prejudice a person’s exercise of functions as a member of the Pension Board. It does not include a financial or other interest arising merely by virtue of that person being a member of the LGPS.

None were declared. 

The Minutes of the meeting held on 26 April 2024 are attached for confirmation.

Minutes of the meeting held on 26 April 2024 were confirmed as a correct record. 

To receive any questions from the public, notice of which has been given in accordance with Procedure Rule 14.  The deadline for this meeting is 5.00 p.m. on Monday 15 July 2024.

No public questions were received.

Report attached. 

Contact:  Vicky Jenks (01743 252192)

The Board considered the report of the Pensions Administration Manager which provided Board Members with the latest administration and regulatory updates affecting the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

The Pensions Administration Manager introduced and amplified her report which updated Members on team workloads and performance, including key performance indicators, projects such as McCloud, Pensions Dashboard, Annual Benefit Statements and the Pensions Regulator new code checklist.  It also informed the Board that, following the 2023-24 internal audit of Pensions Administration, the assurance level remained at ‘good’, which was the highest rating.

The Pensions Administration Manager informed the Board that a business case for additional resources had been submitted to the Head of Pensions for review to help with the current workload which included some areas of backlog.  The work across the team had also been reviewed to ensure that the system was being utilised as much as possible using automated processes where available.  She drew attention to the chart in Appendix A which, in line with the annual report guidance, set out the 17 key performance indicators (KPIs) and whether they had/had not met the deadline target.  This supported the need for additional resource as there were areas where the targets were not being met.

She reported that McCloud had become mostly business as usual with checks in place for leavers to ensure that the underpin was applied where needed.  However, some work was still required on the rectification cases, numbers of which were set out in paragraph 10.3 of the report.

The Pensions Administration Manager explained that the work on the Pensions Dashboard was picking up and they were in the last phases of signing the contract with an integrated service provider that would connect the current administration system to the dashboard allowing information to flow from it and be seen by Members.  The next piece of work would then be around improving the data, address tracing etc to better match records.  It was hoped to work on this data prior to the dashboard going live in order to limit the amount of partial match work undertaken by the team.

Turning to the Annual Benefits Statements, the Pensions Administration Manager explained that the team did a lot of work on this during the summer, getting all the year end data up to 31^st March before then starting to create the statements.  The deferred Statements had been released to members that week and the active member Statements would be done mid-August in order to meet the Pensions Regulator deadline of 31^st August.

In response to a query, the Pensions Administration Manager explained how it was possible to have different records for the same person which could happen if eg the post number within payroll changed leading to a new record being created or if an employee undertook different jobs with the same employer a new record would be created for each role.  For pensions purposes, these records needed to be merged and the team were working with developers to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

For Board Members to raise any questions following the recent Pensions Committee meeting.

Please click on the link below to access the reports considered by the Pensions Committee at its meeting on 21 June 2024.

Agenda for Pensions Committee on Friday, 21st June, 2024, 10.00 am — Shropshire Council

It was confirmed that the reports considered by the Pensions Committee at its meeting on 21^st June 2024 had been received by the Board and also that the meeting had been observed by three members of the Board.

The next meeting of the Pensions Board will be held at 10.00 a.m. on the 8 November 2024.

The date of the next meeting was confirmed as Friday 8 November 2024 at 10am.

To RESOLVE that in accordance with the provision of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, Section 5 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations and Paragraphs 3 of the Council’s Access to Information Rules, the public and press be excluded during consideration of the following items.

RESOLVED:

That in accordance with the provision of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, Section 5 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations and Paragraphs 3 of the Council’s Access to Information Rules, the public and press be excluded during consideration of the following items.

The Exempt Minutes of the meeting held on 26 April 2024 are attached for confirmation.

The exempt minutes of the meeting held on 26 April 2024 were confirmed as a correct record.

Report Attached.

Contact:  Peter Chadderton (07990 086399)

The Board considered and noted the exempt report of the Pensions Investment and Responsible Investment Manager which provided an update on the general economic conditions and of the impact on the pension fund investments in the second quarter of 2024.

For Board Members to raise any questions following the recent Pensions Committee meeting.

Please click on the link below to access the reports considered by the Pensions Committee at its meeting on 21 June 2024.

Agenda for Pensions Committee on Friday, 21st June, 2024, 10.00 am — Shropshire Council

The exempt reports considered by the Pensions Committee at its meeting on 21 June 2024 were received and discussed by the Board

Report attached.

Contact:  Alison Grange (01743 253823)

The Board considered and noted the report of the Communications and Governance Team Leader which provided an update on governance issues.