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 9 May 2023 and Pensions Committee on 15 September 2023.

The Pensions Administration Manager introduced and amplified her report.  She explained that the administration team were heavily focussed on ensuring that policies and procedures were up to date and were currently working on producing a Business Plan purely for the pensions function and it was hoped to take the first draft to the Pensions Committee in December before coming to the next Pensions Board meeting in January.

The Pensions Administration Manager drew attention to the ‘My Pensions online’ update which indicated that only half of all active members viewed their benefits online.  Once the resources within the team were back to full strength, they would do a push to get more online registrations and were using the national ‘Pension Attention’ campaign.

The Pensions Administration Manager explained that a Pensions Savings Webinar had been held on the 10 October for employers who may be affected by future tax implications and a number of one-to-one guidance sessions had been arranged with a tax specialist.  She reported that the Autumn edition of the ‘In touch’ publication was currently being drafted and would include an article about recruitment of a new Pensioner representative.

She went on to report that the employers meeting was due to take place on 14 November 2023 with the main topic likely to be the McCloud remedy which had been implemented in legislation from 1 October 2023.  There was a lot of work to do before the National Dashboard came into being in 2026 to ensure that all employer data was up to date.

Turning to disaster recovery, the Pensions Administration Manager confirmed that the Council’s Pensions Administration system was now held by Haywoods in their Cloud and a successful disaster recovery exercise had been undertaken.  The Pensions Administration Manager drew attention to the update from the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB) in relation to their scheme valuation from 2022, an update around the gender pensions gap and surpluses working group.

Looking at the McCloud remedy, the Pensions Administration Manager informed the Board that although this was now in legislation, they were still awaiting statutory guidance around how to calculate different elements of the pensions’ benefits.  They were currently working with their software provider to include a calculation for McCloud within the system and it was hoped to go live with that in the next few weeks.  The Pensions Administration Manager reported on the recent team training day which had covered McCloud and the national pensions dashboard. 

In response to a query, the Pensions Administration Manager went into more detail around the issue of surpluses and how they were going to be dealt with going forward should they continue to grow, and she agreed to keep the Board updated.

In response to a further query, the Pensions Administration Manager updated the Board in relation to staffing within the Pensions Team.  She confirmed that a new Pensions Administration Manager had been appointed to replace herself and would start on 19 December 2023.  She reminded members that Alison Grange had been appointed to replace the Communications and Governance Team Leader and they had just successfully appointed a new Senior Communications and Governance Officer to replace Alison, although they did not yet have a start date. They currently had one vacancy within the team which would be advertised shortly. 

The Pensions Administration Manager added that recruitment nationally was very difficult, and she confirmed that the LGA were looking at introducing some new qualifications to aid retention of staff and make it more nationally recognised as a proper profession.

          RESOLVED:

          That the contents of the report be noted.