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Agenda item

Pension Administration Update

Report of the Director of People Services.

Minutes:

4.1       Sarah Hay (Senior Pensions and Payroll Adviser) presented the report and advised that Surrey County Council (SCC), who carried out pension administration services on behalf of the Council, had appointed an interim Pension Manager. Sarah Hay informed Members that the key performance indicators (KPIs) for 1 January 2019 to 31 March 2019 had slipped compared to earlier performance, however the KPIs for April 2019 had improved markedly, and the figures coming in for May 2019 were also promising. A meeting had taken place with SCC where the performance between January to March 2019 had been raised. SCC advised that the reason for the drop in performance was due to a failure to check all parts of the workflow systems through which cases are allocated to SCC’s Pensions Team. Subsequently, checks were now being carried out on all work systems resulting in the upturn in performance.

 

4.2       Sarah Hay advised that progress on data cleansing continued, however not at the pace that had been hoped. This was due to SCC significantly reducing the number of batches forwarded and the processes being used by JLT, who were carrying out the exercise. The Council’s Pension Officer and the Pension Project Officer had met with SCC and JLT to discuss the backlog of outstanding cases and JLT had now appointed four additional checking resources. Members noted that JLT were due to report back to SCC on a revised timescale for processing and checking claims.

 

4.3       Sarah Hay confirmed that the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) end of year file for 2018-2019 had been completed. In respect of the Western Union existence checking for pensioners based overseas, she advised that the first letters had been sent and the existence check visits would soon be underway.

 

4.4       During discussion by the Committee, Members queried whether there had been any pension overpayments in respect of overseas pensioners who may have since passed away and what was the procedure carried out when there had been overpayments. Members asked whether SCC’s Pension Manager could be invited to attend a future Committee meeting. Members welcomed progress in respect of data cleansing. In respect of the KPI targets, it was asked if these were realistic and were there sufficient resources in place to achieve these. Members also asked whether SCC would be subject to any contractual penalties if performance targets were not met and how sure were officers that the KPI performances recorded were accurate.

 

4.5       In reply to issues raised by the Committee, Sarah Hay advised that there had been no significant pension overpayments. Where there had been overpayments, those under £100 were written off as the cost of pursuing these would not make the exercise worthwhile. For those exceeding £100, these would be followed up by contacting the next of kin requesting repayment. Sarah Hay confirmed that SCC’s Pension Manager could be invited to attend a future meeting. She felt the KPI targets were realistic and had confidence in the senior pension officers at SCC. Matters such as tax calculations were however complex and conversations could be had with SCC about resourcing levels. Sarah Hay advised that contractual penalties could not be applied in respect to SCC in respect of performance targets as agreement between the Council and the SCC was through a Section 100 shared agreement. She added that the auditors had not raised any issues concerning recording of performance targets at their last visit to SCC.

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