Issue - meetings

The item was introduced by Vicky Jenks (Pensions Admin Delivery Lead), who explained the purpose of the report was to review the first year of the pensions administration partnership with the West Yorkshire Pension Fund. In particular the report showed progress being made regarding the submission of pay information to West Yorkshire by WCC payroll and the ongoing work relating to reconciliation of pensioner payments and overall delivery of services.

Responding to a question from the Chair, Vicky Jenks said it had taken slightly longer than anticipated to embed the new payroll process and additional training had been required There had also been some adjustments needed to account for how  West Yorkshire required data to be submitted and the work to correct any errors on the monthly extract reports. Generally however the service was now working as expected as new routines are becoming the norm and the backlog of monthly payroll reports had been caught up on. This was confirmed by Helen Scargill, who said the West Yorkshire Pension Fund was receiving the data in a timely manner and it was now the data that had been requested. Helen Scargill confirmed that the service was working well however the unexpected work due to the mismatch between the data held by admin and payroll for pensioners, had led to records needing to be checked to confirm the correct information.

Paul Morley noted an item had been raised and discussed in detail at a recent conference regarding data accuracy, and asked if it was worth having a standing item at future meetings on data accuracy in case it was a significant issue. Councillor Hammersley asked for clarification on whether issues relating to data were due to system or human error. Vicky Jenks said firefighter pension schemes consisted of ten different categories that had different regulations, which made them complex to administer, and errors could be caused by the software and by the wrong indicators being inputted manually. She said part of the reason for having the partnership with the West Yorkshire Pension Fund was to provide greater resilience and staff knowledge of pensions administration. It was hoped the improvements in data quality would continue as the partnership developed over time, although it was accepted there may be some further historic issues that would need resolving in the future. The Chair said the Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service had noticed a similar pattern when its pension scheme started to be administered by West Yorkshire.

Paul Morley accepted pensions administration was becoming increasingly complex and stated his belief the West Yorkshire Pension Fund were providing a good service. However he said the errors from the various sources could accumulate and become a greater issue affecting people’s pensions that could significantly impact payment of pensions due in the future. He said he had been contacted by some scheme members who had noticed problems with their pension contributions deducted from their pay. Liz Firmstone (Service Manager – Transformation) said she would liaise with Paul  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2