Agenda item

CHANGE MANAGEMENT UPDATE

This paper details the Change Team Quarterly Report of activity for the period April – June 2024.

 

Minutes:

Speakers:

Nicole Russell - Head of Change Management

Amy Wallace – Senior Project Specialist

Colette Hollands, Interim Head of Accounting and Governance

 

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.    The Head of Change Management highlighted the following areas:

a)    All business as usual communications had gone out as planned.

b)    The Surrey Pension Team had been nominated and shortlisted for a number of awards.

c)    The Board and Committee report templates had been reviewed and was now more accessible.

d)    The results of the recent Pulse survey would be available at the next meeting.

e)    The agenda for the residential learning for the Board and Committee would be shared soon.  It was confirmed that the residential training would be held in Winchester.  Further details would follow.

2.    A Member spoke about increasing interference from Government in how pensions are administered especially with investments and asked for a summary paper to lay out the varying degrees of freedom about what the fund can or cannot do in relation to Government edicts.  The LGPS Senior Officer responded that the session on investment beliefs with the Committee will be discussing this, that has at its core an understanding of fiduciary duty and how that applies to committees in the wider sense regarding both local authority and central government. There will also be invited guests including someone from the Scheme Advisory Board advising on this at that session.  This issue will be included on the agenda at the residential learning session.

3.    The Senior Project Specialist gave an update on each on the ongoing projects which included:

a)    with GMP, officers were liaising with Aptia to get this resolved and completed by the end of February next year.

b)    Work with McCloud was on track and currently testing, with more testing next week before going live.

c)    Lunch and learn sessions were booked until November and had been well attended

d)    the responsible investment project has a very light touch from a project  management perspective to support as and when needed with good project management practice.

4.    In response to a question regarding banking controls the Interim Head of Accounting and Governance explained that banking controls audit was next on the list on the internal audit plan. The terms of reference were being drafted and would be ready in the next couple of weeks. The previous two audit reports on the banking controls would be reviewed and then moving this forward with the view to a further update at the end of this quarter.  It was anticipated that the banking control issues would be addressed in the next few months. However, as issues with Unit 4 remained unresolved, the actions connected to this dependency would not have been progressed.

5.    The Head of Change Management went on to cover the transformation aspects from the report which included:

a)    Work on the Digital Transformation strategy with initial efforts focused on digitisation of forms and a couple of core processes.

b)    A business case examining evolving the governance and identity of the pension fund would come to the September meeting.

 

Actions/ further information to be provided:

None.

 

Recommendations:

The Board noted the report.

 

Supporting documents: