Agenda item

Report of the Director of People Services.

8.1       Lee Witham (Director of People Services) presented this item and began by stating that BT had declined the invitation to the meeting on the grounds that they were in commercial negotiations with the City Council. He advised that officers had met with BT on a twice weekly basis to address performance concerns, however this had currently ceased whilst commercial negotiations were underway. However, every effort continued to be made to resolve issues with BT, along with the help of Jason Bailey (Pension Services Manager, Surrey County Council).

8.2       Lee Witham then turned to the revised key performance indicators (KPIs) and stated that there were now more KPIs for a number of additional measures. Each KPI also included the number of cases involved to help put each in perspective. Members noted that Surrey County Council Pension Services Team had created the new set of KPIs and the performance was monitored by the City Council.

8.3       Jason Bailey then addressed the Committee and acknowledged that some targets were still not being met. In order to address this, some changes at management level were being made, including the appointment of two team leaders, whilst an operational manager would be in post by April. Jason Bailey anticipated that the changes would lead to improvements in a number of areas, with many rated ‘red’ turning to ‘green’ as the benefits of the changes started to show.

8.4       Christopher Smith (Scheme Member Representative, Pension Board) was then invited to address the Committee to inform them of some of the experiences he had been told of by pension scheme members. Christopher Smith began by welcoming the new set of KPIs, particularly as they included the number of cases involved. However, he felt that some improvements to the reporting could still be made, such as the number of death benefits notified target showing 100%, even though none had been made during that period.

8.5       Christopher Smith advised Members that he was not satisfied with the experiences of scheme members being reported to him. One member had not received their annual benefit statements for 4 years, and when they finally had received one, it had incorrectly stated that no contributions had been paid. Christopher Smith emphasised that one of the most important issues to address was to ensure pension payments were made in time. He acknowledged that performance had improved since the issues raised at the last Pensions Annual General Meeting on 21 September 2016 and People Services had worked very hard to address this. However, he could not be sure that the 250 annual benefit statements that had been outstanding were now all resolved. He also felt that there were a number of other cases that remained unresolved, involving a number of different issues and it was possible that some scheme members were no longer reporting their problems as they had little faith that they could be resolved. In reply to a query from Members, Christopher Smith suggested that there were possibly around 30 cases that remained unresolved.

8.6       The Chairman stated that cases such as the annual benefit statement that had not been provided for four years were not reported within the KPI data, along with other BT related cases as performance could not be monitored where data was inaccurate or missing. Members remarked that it was important that the experiences of scheme members were reported more regularly and that this was an area the Pension Board could focus on. Members sought assurances that BT had invested sufficiently in staff to address the problems being experienced.

8.7       Dr Norman Perry asked whether the Housing Communities Agency, another large organisation within the pension scheme, had encountered problems similar to those of the City Council. Marie Holmes (Employer Side Representative, Pension Board) commented that a number of admitted bodies in the scheme did not use BT and she asked that information be provided in respect of their pension administration performance too. She added that she also received details of cases where scheme members had experienced problems.

8.8       In reply to the issues raised, Lee Witham stated that People Services also received details of difficulties being experienced by scheme members. He advised that the 250 outstanding annual benefit statements related to staff that had been absent. The BT file containing this data had been inaccurate and officers had requested that BT bring in additional resources to address this and a deadline of 10 February had been set to provide a corrected file. The file submitted had led to an improvement in the quality of data from 30% to 90%, however Lee Witham acknowledged that this was still not good enough. However, he felt more assured that BT now knew how to resolve issues. Members noted that BT had been requested to provide an updated file to Surrey County Council within two weeks, who would then need a further two weeks to send out the outstanding annual benefit statements.

8.9       Lee Witham stated that a root cause analysis of the issues being experienced in relation to BT had been undertaken. He felt that BT had now invested sufficiently in staff, however they needed to work better in order to improve performance.  With regard to cases such as the annual benefit statement case highlighted, he would discuss with Jason Bailey and Christopher Smith how such cases could be reported in the KPIs.

8.10    Jason Bailey stated that he was not aware of any pension administration issues in respect of the Housing Communities Agency, who did not use BT as their payroll provider. However, he advised that there were instances of other payroll providers for organisations in the pension scheme who also did not always provide accurate data and it was acknowledged that both the Committee and the Board needed to be made aware of this.

 8.11   The Chairman expressed concern that problems persisted, despite efforts made to address them. He requested that future reports reflect the performance of the City Council, Surrey County Council, BT and admitted bodies payroll providers. Members expressed concern that problems remained, despite efforts made to address these. The Chairman also requested that he meet with Christopher Smith, Lee Witham, Jason Bailey and other Members to discuss this matter further, looking into each case if necessary. He further added that if progress was unsatisfactory, then a report would be required detailing each case at the next meeting.