Issue - meetings

Fire Pensions Administration Update

Meeting: 04/11/2024 - Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Local Pension Board of the Firefighters' Pension Scheme (Item 5)

5 Fire Pensions Administration Update pdf icon PDF 86 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Lisa Eglesfield said there had been 57 expressions of interest from people who wanted a calculation relating to the Second Retained Exercise. Around a third of these calculations had now taken place, and conversations with those who had requested one had been positive. Details of positive elections were being passed on to the West Yorkshire Pension Fund.

 

A tracing exercise had recently been undertaken of members who had been identified as being in scope for the Second Retained Exercise. Of those, 36 were confirmed as being at the address that were on the records held by the Pension Fund; 38 had new addresses and had been written to; and three had passed away. A further 31 could not be identified and two could not be traced. A report needed to be sent to the Pensions Regulator regarding those who could not be identified or traced as this amounted to a breach. Some responses had started to be received from those members who had been written to.

 

Two DELTA returns had been completed with the help of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund and returned to the Home Office.

 

Helen Scargill said there were two unmet KPIs, relating to pension estimates and death in retirement cases. This was mainly due to staff resources, with staff concentrating on work relating to the age discrimination case, and work associated with creating pension estimates being particularly labour intensive. Additionally, in some cases information from personal records was missing that would enable staff to make the calculations that led to a pension estimate being created. The number of requests for an estimate had also increased. Death in retirement cases had increased, and they needed to be given priority in instances where there was a beneficiary and the work needed to be processed as a matter of urgency.

 

Helen Scargill said steps were being undertaken to give teams more specialised work to do; rather than having staff that knew something about all aspects of pensions work, they would be trained into a field of specialism and given the remit to focus on that aspect. It was hoped this would speed up dealing with pension estimates and transfers in particular, although it was anticipated in the meantime the KPI may continue to not be met.

 

It was confirmed the data requested by the National Fraud Initiative had been submitted by the deadline, and had been sent on 4 October. Feedback from the auditor report had been positive.

 

Representatives from the West Yorkshire Pension Fund had recently attended an administrators’ forum. Members there had said there was confusion regarding guidance issued by HMRC about processing red FRA cases, and little confidence that staff were certain they knew what they were doing. Helen Scargill said the Local Government Association would contact the Government Actuary Department for clarification on this issue, and if template examples could be given on how to use the calculations.

 

There were 33 members of the Warwickshire Fire Pension Fund where home address details were not known.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5