Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to provide an update on the current status and progress against any specific target dates.

Speakers:

Tom Lewis, Head of Service Delivery

Jim Woodingfield, Deputy Head of Service Delivery Benefits Administration

Liam Pippard, Principal Auditor

Neil Mason, LGPS Senior Officer

Key points raised during the discussion:

f)     The Head of Service Delivery gave a precis of the report and highlighted the following areas:

a)    Performance was down in some areas including retirements and survivors, benefits, death grants.  The root cause of that over time was where staff absence had caused the team to fall behind and struggled to get back on top of that. He explained how two teams had been merged to deal with this issue and extra training to get more staff able to deal with certain jobs and how that was making progress so far.

b)    The legacy project was going well, and more detail had been provided in the report.  Performance had plateaued slightly in the last quarter because the team were now digging into cases that there's a bit more lead time on and there had been an increased period of team training and analysis of that work to make sure it can all be allocated in the right way.

c)    A Member questioned the figures for retirements and transfers in both in the report and on the dashboard as there appeared to be a 10% difference between the two.  The Head of Service Delivery explained how the dashboard was giving joint percentages from several areas added together and that this was being discussed in terms of how much information was in the dashboard.

d)    Four cases had come from the Pension Ombudsman which was more than usual, and the reason was that the Ombudsman was now better resourced and addressing a backlog of cases.

e)    For GMP the team had re-engaged with the third-party supplier for this and were seeking to rescope this work with them and get new plans.  There was a wait on some commercials but also a serious delay in getting this information which had become quite frustrating. If this wasn’t sorted out within the next two to four weeks, then there would be a similar situation to last year where it was asked can we do this before pensions increase.  It has been raised with the supplier customer relationship manager but if that doesn’t get us a result we will need to consider further escalation at that point.

f)     Regarding McCloud, the system configuration had gone in since the most recent upgrades. There had been much testing around the bulk interface tools and the calculations. There had also been some increased scenario testing with guidance from various bodies.

g)    In response to a member question asking if there was any additional backlog being built up since the reduction of legacy cases, the Head of Service Delivery confirmed this was not the case and this will remain an objective of the service to ensure this doesn't happen moving forward. It was however stated the impact of Unit 4 was causing cases to stall with approximately 1600 cases pending processing.

h)    Members chose to discuss annex 2 of item 10 – Risk Register – as it was appropriate to do so at this point in their discussions.  This was about Unit 4 and iConnect.

a)    The Head of Service Delivery gave a detailed overview of what checking and re-checking data meant for the team.

b)    On the accounting and governance side of the MySurrey Unit 4 issues, the set up wasn’t ideal for pension fund itself.  That has caused issues in recording data and additional checks needed to prepare the fund accounts, although the fund accounts were now prepared it had also led to considerable delays in being able to post receipts and payments in year.  Extra resources within the team had been used to get ahead on that.

c)    In response to a Member query on the human aspect of these issues the Head of Service Delivery explained that there were significant delays to paying some pensions caused by a lack of data or responses to queries raised with SCC and where possible, we would continue to make interim pension payments to members.  Staff were very frustrated internally, both those processing the case work and those taking the calls directly from members. 

d)    The Principal Auditor explained that the payroll audit should be finished soon, then they would look at the impact for pensions

e)    The Chair explained how he and the Chair of the Committee had been working hard to support the team by stressing the urgency of this and had several meetings with various people. It had been agreed that both Chairs meet regularly with pension officers to keep abreast of it.

f)     Following a detailed discussion on the issues involved the LGPS Senior Officer reported that officers had a duty to assess these issues and if material, to report them to the Pensions Regulator. The Regulator had helpfully set out some criteria to assess that. One of the areas that the Regulator focused on was the provision of annual benefit statements and the number of members impacted. Where it would be the majority or a large number of Members impacted, that would be the level to consider a report to the Regulator. Currently it was thought that a small number of members would be affected but the team will keep this under review.

Actions/ further information to be provided:

None.

Recommendations:

The Board noted the report.