Issue - meetings

Lisa Eglesfield said 118 people who were believed to be in scope for the Matthews project had been identified and written to in December. Of those, 43 had replied asking for more information, six had been returned as no longer at the address, and the remainder had received no response. The figures for the 43 respondees were now being calculated and it was hoped these could be distributed by late March with the view to make funding available to make payments from the start of the new tax year. Further reminders would be sent to the 69 people who had not yet responded. Lisa Eglesfield said a signed-for letter would be sent; if these were signed for and no response was received then this would be taken as an indication the recipient was not interested and there would be no further communications sent to that person. Attempts would be made to trace the six people no longer at the address held on the database through the Department of Work and Pensions’ tracing service. Lisa Eglesfield said there were regular check-in meetings to ensure appropriate progress was being made as there were strict deadlines. Responding to a question from the Chair, Lisa Eglesfield said around 15 of the people yet to respond were serving firefighters. Sally Waldron said WFRS could help by sending out reminders through station managers to encourage more responses. Pay data existed as far back as 2006; anything prior to this was calculated using averages.

Regarding the McCloud age discrimination remedy, Lisa Eglesfield said the Warwickshire Pension Fund had supplied the West Yorkshire Pension Fund with the data needed for pension calculations for the remedy period, but further work needed to be done regarding contributions. The calculations were then being worked out through a calculator tool released through the government’s actuarial department, which took into account different contribution rates and adjustments for tax and interest. Members within scope, and retirement cases, had been identified and payroll were working to get all the information needed for the West Yorkshire Pension Fund to calculate the annual benefit statements.

Lisa Eglesfield said the time the report was written, there had been a breach in relation to the non disclosure relating to the six Matthews cases, where the disclosure letter was returned gone away. She said this did not qualify as a material breach so would not be reported to the Pensions Regulator.

Helen Scargill (West Yorkshire Pension Fund) introduced the December monthly report to members. There had been one case of a death in retirement where there had been a delay in the length of time taken to get the managed certificate from the beneficiary, meaning there had been a KPI that had not met its timeframe. The Chair asked if some of the KPIs could be refined and gave this as an example. He said it was unclear if the delay had been caused by the individual not supplying the information, or if there had been a fault caused by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5