Agenda item

This report sets out Key Performance Indicators for the administration of the Local Government Pension Scheme for the three-month period up to the end of November 2023.

Ava Payne entered at 2.07pm.

The Pensions Manager introduced the report and explained that the administration team had finished their last statutory requirement for the year which was to issue pension savings statements for anyone who exceeded the annual allowance for 2022/23. The Pensions Manager stated that following changes in regulation they saw a large decrease in the number of cases which they had to investigate. The Pensions Manager confirmed that all savings statements had been issued before the 6 October deadline.

The Pensions Manager explained that the team leaders and the technical team had been focused on how to improve their key performance indicators (KPI’s) as they were below expectations. The Pensions Manager informed the Board that they have realised that 50% of their workload is taken up by leavers however they had not allocated 50% of their resources to leavers and this was reflected in the KPI’s.

The Pensions Manager stated that following a review of their workload they had identified areas which were causing the team issues such as cases where an employer had changed payrolls providers. The Pensions Manager explained that there was often a debate between the existing and new payroll provider over who would provide legal information, this put officers in a position where they would have to chase to receive the necessary information.

In response to a question from a member, officers informed the Board that:

• Officers had 120 employers in the scheme and the biggest employer was the Council and they had access to their payroll system. The school’s payroll was an issue as they used an external provider. Some of these external providers took time to provide officers with the necessary information.
• In the admin strategy officers had the provision to fine employers. They were meeting to discuss resourcing for the governance team. They had found that a lot of employers who signed a contract with payroll providers included the provision that they would handle pensions but they would seek to educate employers.
• Officers could improve communication with employers and they had assessed the structure of their team. They felt as though they had enough members of the team to provide this service.
• Officers had to go through the councils HR procedures as they were employees of the Council.
• All LGPS funds had experienced resourcing issues, there were issues with the structures of existing teams and there had been a growth in the workload for officers and there was a need for an increase in resources.
• The fund paid costs for the resourcing of admin staff; however, their contracts were with the Council. If members wanted to increase their salary budget, then they would have to go through the Councils HR processes.
• The move to separate the funds accounts and the Councils accounts was unlikely to affect the current method of increasing resources as they were not separate legal entities.
• The problem in the past was that issues had all been anecdotal and so officers did not have enough data to assess the issues properly. Officers believed that processing leavers for the Council was more straightforward in comparison with processing with leavers for external employers.
• There were duplicate items in the table within the report as one of the items was in relation to the legal deadline, and the other item was in relation to the Croydon deadline which officers had set themselves to provide a better service.

RESOLVED:

• Note the Key Performance Indicators and the performance against these indicators set out in Appendix A to this report.