Issue - meetings

The item was introduced by Lisa Eglesfield (Interim Pension Administration Delivery Lead), who provided the following updates:

·       Takeup and usage of the member self service portal was continuing to increase slowly. Annual benefit statements would be available to view online when released and it was hoped this would lead to another increase in portal users. The LGA was collecting data for portal usage with a view to identifying areas of good practice. The main benefit of the portal had been it made it easier for pension holders to project their pension estimates.

·       Work was continuing to make sure the national pensions dashboard would be launched on target. It was hoped that once fully implemented it would further increase usage of the member self service portal.

·       KPIs were continuing to perform well. Many of the lower performing KPIs were affected by issues that were outside of the Fund’s control. Following guidance from the Scheme Advisory Board, the KPIs were in the process of being reviewed and amended.

·       From 1 April there had been a 6.7 per cent increase in pension payments being made.

·       The Multi Academy Trust that had been shown as having a red rating regarding a breach did not have this rating as of February. The most recent data available in the report was from January. There were six other employers that were in breach due to issues relating to employer contribution payments. These had been referred to the Pensions Regulator and a response was awaited.

·       There was one new IDRP referral, which was at stage one. Another referral, for which it had been anticipated a resolution would be found, had instead now progressed to stage two.

·       A revised business case was going through the corporate approval process.

Responding to a question from Jeff Carruthers regarding scams, Lisa Eglesfield said these were rare but there were controls in place to prevent them happening. The most common red flag would be a pension holder asking to transfer out all of their money to a private pension that was not an LGPS or other public sector scheme. This would happen infrequently however, perhaps only 20 times per year.

Regarding KPI performance, the Chair said it would be useful if the performance rate in the current quarter could be compared to that of the previous quarter and asked if this could be included in future reports. Lisa Eglesfield said it would be possible to include data comparing performance to the same quarter in the previous year.

Members were told the launch date for the pensions dashboard to the public had been pushed back to October 2026. However the date for Warwickshire to connect to the dashboard was still October 2025. The procurement process for provision of the dashboard’s ISP was still ongoing.

Regarding the McCloud remedy, Lisa Eglesfield said 11,000 records had been processed and 200 underpayments had been found.

Members noted the contents of the report.