Philip Boyton, Pension Administration Manager, introduced the report and stated that this report covered the quarter 1^st July 2022 to 30^th September 2022. Section 1.4 of the report covered i-Connect users, and Philip Boyton confirmed that The Holt School had onboarded, and the Fund continued to work with the Slough and East Berkshire Multi-Academy Trust along with one other large Trust, which would reduce the number of member records down from the reported circa. 2300 to somewhere in the region of 1700. Additionally, the six unitary authorities had achieved 100% file submission with the period, with Academies, Schools and other employer types providing data to the team on a regular, timely basis.

Section 2.2 of the report covered the Pensions Dashboards Programme, with the regulations governing pensions dashboards being ratified by Parliament. As part of making these regulations, public sector schemes were required to onboard in late 2024 rather than late 2023. The Fund could now work with software provider Heywood Pension Technologies in ensuring that the Fund was in line to meet this date. This would involve a data cleansing exercise which was negotiated to be free of charge, combined with the annual data quality test of Common and Scheme specific data in line with The Pensions Regulator (tPR) code of practice. The Fund planned to meet with the software provider during early February 2023 to set out a timeline of events and who would be responsible for key targets.

Councillor Sharpe asked if there was anything that Philip Boyton wished to highlight as the main issue from an administration perspective.

Philip Boyton stated that this would be dealing with the additional workload created by the McCloud judgement alongside ensuring the Fund is as best placed as possible to meet its obligations in respect of the Pensions Dashboards Regulations. This went hand-in-hand with having good quality data, which historically through the tPR annual data quality exercise, the Fund could demonstrate the evidence for. Furthermore, working with Heywood Pension Technologies would help with this.

Councillor Hilton asked if admitted bodies had a right to enter into the Pension Scheme, and whether the Fund checked if they were in good shape.

Kevin Taylor, Pension Services Manager, stated that part of the process when admitting these bodies was for the actuary to undertake an evaluation of the assets and liabilities attributable to the scheme members being transferred to the new employer. They transfer at 100% funded level for future membership of the scheme, and were monitored at each valuation period to ensure that the contributions that had been paid were sufficient to meet their liabilities. As part of the triennial valuation, the Fund’s actuaries were asked to do a full employer covenant review of those employers perceived to be at risk.

Councillor Da Costa asked in whose gift it was to say yes or no to an organisation joining the Fund, and if the Pensions Dashboard Programme was something that the Committee would be talked to and given information about. Councillor Da Costa also asked for clarity on the term data cleansing.

Kevin Taylor stated that the Fund was bound by the Scheme regulations to provide admitted body status to groups of staff that were transferred out of a local authority and into the private sector under TUPE regulations. The only other option would be to provide employees with a government actuary-certified broadly equivalent Pension Scheme, which didn’t really exist in the private sector. Therefore, the only route was to protect members’ pensions through admission and ongoing access to the LGPS.

Philip Boyton explained that across scheme member records, there was ‘Common data’, which referred to personal data of an individual, such as Full Name, Date of Birth and National Insurance Number. These data items were presented to a scheme member when they logged onto the Pensions Dashboards. Further to this, there was Scheme Specific data, which was the type of data items held by each individual type of pension scheme to ensure that benefits could be calculated in line with statutory regulations. The Fund needed to ensure that it held the most up to date Scheme Specific data to ensure that scheme members saw the most accurate estimate of benefits. Data cleansing was carried out on an annual basis by the software provider and returned healthy results over the last 5 years, averaging 98% on both types of data. However, this could always be improved. The exercise that was carried out further to the tPR annual data quality exercise was making sure that the Fund had the data positioned correctly within the software to map to the Pensions Dashboards. The Fund was awaiting the results of this check.

Councillor Da Costa asked if the Committee would be receiving a paper of some kind of training on the requirements of the new regulations which would be implemented by the end of 2024.

Philip Boyton confirmed that as part of future administration reports, officers would be reporting back to the Committee on how the project was progressing, any challenges or hurdles that had been encountered and how those were being addressed.

Kevin Taylor stated that the Fund had put itself forward as a test site for Heywood’s technology so would be involved in the actual structure of the dashboard when it came to data being mapped to the dashboard.

Councillor Sharpe thanked Kevin Taylor and stated it was important to be ahead of the curve.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Pension Fund Committee notes the report and;

i)               Notes all areas of governance and administration as reported;

ii)             Notes all key performance indicators; and

iii)            Approves publication of the quarterly Administration report on the Pension Fund website.