Issue - meetings

The item was introduced by Lisa Eglesfield (Pensions Administration Service Manager). Take up of the Member Self-Service Portal was slowly increasing for active and deferred members. The Fund had issued active and deferred annual benefit statements through the portal in August, and all active and deferred benefit members that had a known email address had been contacted to advise of this. There had been identified usage of the portal based on age, and targeted communications had been issued to members as a result. The software provider for the portal have said the system will be turned off on 31 January 2026, so a project team to deliver a new system had been created. The aim was to have this in place by 1 April 2025 as this would tie in with the national roll out of the pensions dashboard and the Fund’s triannual valuation.

Lisa Eglesfield said 98.5 per cent of active members had received their annual benefit statement numbers. There were 256 that could not be issued, mostly relating to queries outstanding with employers.

Members’ attention was drawn to the summary of the key performance indicators. Lisa Eglesfield stated her belief the failure to meet the 95 per cent target in the B3 indicator did not accurately reflect the standard of service being offered by the Fund, as pension holders were still receiving a good level of service. Officers were also working to improve performance in two other areas relating to new KPIs.

Staff workloads and payroll had both been positive.

There were no red breaches but one amber one, relating to three Academy schools that had changed Academy Trust. Legal paperwork that was needed by the Fund was still outstanding. There was also one IDRP that was still to be resolved.

Regarding the McCloud project, checks had been completed on more than 14,000 members. Underpins had been identified in 75 pensioner cases, 210 deferred cases, and 263 active cases. Work was taking place to ensure they were true underpins and not generated by any incorrect data.

Members noted the contents of the report.