09 Jul 2020 - Minutes - Local Firefighter Pension Board Meeting

Review of Training Policy
Action: BS to send our the Learning Needs Analysis to all

BS discussed the Current Pension Issues report. The contract for the Pension Scheme Administrator has been awarded to West Yorkshire Pension Fund who are already the provider for two other Fire Authorities. A different system, Civica, will be used, BS is confident this won’t be an issue. Costs have generally been lower due to the use of Civica. An additional budget will cover the transition.

MS asked whether the self-service portal will link across. - This will require discussion and a meeting is planned. It is in the contract of requirements.

GAD have requested information which IH’s team have provided – all is going to plan and should be in on time. No immediate concerns.

LGA have provided the wording for future job adverts that raise tax awareness.

ABS statements are on target to be issued by the deadline of 31 August 2020. Given the staffing pressures on the administration team and the issue that they will not be correct following the McCloud judgement, the decision has been made not to include the forward projection of pensions for the 2019/20 ABS.

The TPR annual survey was completed in December, BS has circulated it to all. Areas identified are improving from last year i.e. cyber security. There is an issue on some questions asked around data which BS has responded to.

The main change is the transfer to the new administrator – this remains the number one risk. It is hoped both systems will parallel run in December prior to going live with the new system in January in order to reduce risks.

BS added a risk – ‘Interruption in service due to COVID 19’. It was agreed all pandemics should come under this risk.

The July report covers April – June. Work on the ABS and taxation statements has commenced with deferred statements for ’06 members.

The biggest change for the valuation for GAD is the hours for McCloud.

There have been no regulatory changes.

LGA will be issuing further information on the Sargeant case if there are changes to the remedy.

No risks or breaches.

The March report covers October – December.

Scheme specific data is 53.7% which is a drop due to the information being requested not being fully considered. This applies to all Heywood users.

Termination of admin – IH is working with Heywoods who are aware the system will be Civica and therefore extraction work is required to move data to Civica, the pensioner payroll will also require aligning. There are a large number of personnel working on this and once the project plan is completed it will be shared with Heywoods. Two or three data cuts are generally required to move all of the data over properly.

The bulletin was circulated to all for review.

Another court case regarding on-call which states they should have been entitled to join for all of their working lives. There may be issues with records not going back far enough.

Action: BS to add the future court case potential costs to the risk register