Report attached.

Contact: Debbie Sharp (01743) 252192

The Board received the report of the Pensions Administration Manager – copy attached to the signed Minutes – which provided Members with the latest administration and regulatory updates affecting the Local Government Pensions Scheme since the Administration report provided to Pensions Board on 17 February 2023 and Pensions Committee on 17 March 2023.

The Communications and Governance Team Leader introduced and amplified the report.  She updated the Board in relation to take up of the ‘My Pensions Online’ which had increased slightly following delivery of four webinars aimed at all active members telling them more about the Local Government Pension Scheme and the benefits of being a member.  She went on to highlight the opened email rate for the bulk email functionality used to update Members with the latest fund news, along with the open rate for employer bulk emails, set out in paragraphs 8.6 and 8.7 of the report.

In response to a query, the Communications and Governance Team Leader explained some of the reasons why the emails were not being opened, for example, they were going into junk folders.  She reported that an exercise was currently underway to review the employer contact details held to ensure they were correct.  She went on to explain the tool used to check the opened email along with plans to use other formats instead of a newsletter which people may only read if they have time and she agreed to arrange for examples to be shared at the next meeting.

She informed the Board that they were on track to produce the active and deferred annual benefit statements by 31 August and that the fund’s Annual Report for 2022/23 would be presented to the September meeting of the Board.

Turning to the McCloud judgement, the Communications and Governance Team Leader reported that the Government had now published the outcome of the consultation undertaken in 2020 on proposals to remove age discrimination from the LGPS in England and Wales.  National guidance was still awaited on the response, but a revised consultation was expected around the treatment of records that had already been aggregated.

The Communications and Governance Team Leader updated the Board in relation to the work being done with the actuary to categorise employers according to the quality of its data (paragraph 10.5).  Further to a query raised in the February meeting, the actuary had carried out a stand alone estimate of the cost of the McCloud judgement and estimated that the cost was an increase in past service liabilities of £23m (0.9%) as at the valuation date.

The Communications and Governance Team Leader updated the Board in relation to the Pensions Dashboard and following a request at the previous meeting, provided further feedback from the employers meeting including the number of employers who attended the meeting, the number who requested a one-to-one with the actuary and the results from the feedback forms.  In order for Members to better understand the profile of employers in the fund, they requested a breakdown showing how many active members each employer had.

The Communications and Governance Team Leader also drew attention to the introduction of the Fund Business Plan, changes to the scheme following the Spring 2023 Budget, the Frozen Refund project, whereby 87 out of 435 refunds had been paid, and finally, she explained the changes in the SCAPE discount rate (Superannuation contributions adjusted for past experience).

RESOLVED:  

That the contents of the report be noted.