Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room Two, County Offices, Newland, Lincoln LN1 1YL

Contact: Andrea Brown  Democratic Services Officer

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies for Absence

Minutes:

No apologies for absence had been received.  All Members were in attendance.

2.

Declarations of Members' Interest

Minutes:

Councillor M A Whittington declared that his wife was in receipt of a pension from the fund.

 

A standing declaration for Mr D Vickers was noted as follows:-

 

"Mr D Vickers highlighted a potential interest due to an ongoing issue between Mouchel Pension Scheme, of which he is a Trustee, and the Lincolnshire Pension Fund which was administered by West Yorkshire Pension Fund.  The Board was asked to note the potential conflict of interest during consideration of future items."

3.

Minutes of the Meeting of the LGPS Local Pension Board held on 26 March 2018 pdf icon PDF 138 KB

Minutes:

The Chairman asked that the following amendments be made to the minutes:-

 

Minute No. 33 (page 4 of the agenda pack)

 

The following sentence to be added to the end of paragraph 3:-

 

"This meeting was cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions."

 

The first sentence in paragraph 4 to be deleted and the second sentence amended to read:-

 

"Vicki Sharpe of LCC explained that Fiona Thompson (Service Manager, People) had been unable to attend this meeting as she was currently addressing the Audit Committee on similar issues."

 

RESOLVED

 

          That the minutes of the meeting of the LGPS Local Pension Board held on 26 March 2018, with the amendments noted above, be agreed and signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

4.

Employer Issue - LCC Improvement Plan pdf icon PDF 58 KB

(To receive a report by Jo Ray (Pension Fund Manager) which provides an overview of the concerns raised by the Board relating to the information provided by Lincolnshire County Council to the Fund's Administrator, West Yorkshire Pension Fund.  Representatives of LCC have been invited to provide assurance on their progress in addressing this issue and establishing robust arrangements in order to fulfil their statutory responsibilities as an employer in this area)

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Consideration was given to a report by Jo Ray (Pension Fund Manager) which provided an overview of the concerns raised by the Board relating to the information provided by Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) to the Fund's Administrator, West Yorkshire Pension Fund (WYPF).

 

The Board received a report in January and an update in March 2018 following which LCC were invited to this additional meeting to provide assurance to the Board that the issues were being addressed and that robust arrangements had been established in order to fulfil their statutory responsibilities as an employer.

 

Vicki Sharpe (Pay and Reward Lead, LCC) introduced the report and circulated a document entitled 'Progress on Actions – Leavers Data Sent to WYPF @ 7 June 2018'.  The document included the following priority actions and progress to-date:-

 

1.    Progress the Leaver's Backlog;

2.    Address the quality issues (both correcting the historical errors and ongoing); and

3.    Ongoing monitoring of the employer responsibilities by LCC.

 

The Board was advised that the current backlog stood at 678 with a further 176 cases to be submitted by the end of the week, this would take the outstanding backlog to 502.  Some concern had been raised about the quality of the data although Serco had indicated that these were the more complex case which dated back to before 2015.   These particular cases required manual data checks through paper files and records to ensure that submissions were accurate in order to minimise queries from the Fund's Administrator.

 

The Board was assured that the backlog would be complete within two to three months.

 

Having self-referred to The Pension Regulator (TPR), LCC were sending regular updates on progress.  It was reported that TPR had not contacted LCC about their referral, therefore it was assumed that they were content with the progress so far. 

 

A follow-up Payroll Audit had been completed in May 2018 which focussed on known issues and auditing that improvements had been made consistently to the control environment in payroll.  An update was to be presented to the Audit Committee in June 2018.

 

The Chairman invited Yunus Gajra (Business Manager, West Yorkshire Pension Fund) to comment on the improvements made from the point of view of the Pensions Administrator.  It was noted that there had been a vast improvement from the previous position but that the rate of receiving rectified data had resulted in considerable additional work to calculate deferred benefits and deferred benefit statements.  The improvements had been noticeable and that the forms received appeared to be accurate therefore the number of queries had reduced significantly.

 

During discussion, the following points were noted:-

·       Any underpayments would be rectified through future payrolls;

·       Since the last meeting of the Board, it had been reported that LCC were currently looking for an alternative payroll provider from 2020 (at the end of the current contract with Serco).  Planning was underway to transition to a new provider;

 

At 2.12pm, Mr D Vickers joined the meeting

 

·       The potential for the Council to move to a new  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

 

 
 
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