Agenda item

1.            Mrs C Chambers introduced the report and highlighted key challenges and areas of progress:-

·         staff recruitment had been successful, attracting candidates of a good standard;

·         a new way of working to support scheme member and employers had been established;

·         development of the member self-service portal had continued;

·         improvements in distributing mail and telephony services were expected to be completed by Christmas 2022;

·         consultation for the Administration Strategy was due to commence after the Employer Forum on 9 December, with a deadline for responses by 31 January 2023.

2.                   The Chairman thanked Mrs Chambers for the great amount of improvement and design work she had led since joining the County Council in April 2022 and emphasised how aware Members were of the importance and complexity of the pensions administration role.

3.                   Mrs Chambers then responded to comments and questions from the committee, including the following:-

a)       asked for a brief explanation of the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) rectification project, Mrs Chambers advised that this involved reconciling fund data with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data and adjusting any over- or underpayment. This would involve a large-scale project, which would be contracted out to an external company, with work set to start on 1 February 2023, to free up pensions staff to concentrate on other administrative work;

b)      Regulations arising from the McCloud judgement on local authority pensions administration was still awaited from Central Government, so the impact on local authority pensions administration could not yet be identified. The Kent Pension Fund was in the process of recruiting a Programme Manager to handle the project work relating to this and other major projects, and an options paper to explore the likely impact of the new Regulations and identify appropriate solutions would be prepared for the committee. Unfortunately, the intended timetable for issuing the new Regulations had changed several times. Mr Buckland added that the team had done as much prep as they could in anticipation of receiving the new Regulations.  Once issued, the new Regulations would have a deadline by which they would need to be implemented;

c)       asked if the team would need more resources to manage this work, Mrs Chambers advised that well-qualified and capable administrators would be needed but that pensions teams all across the UK would be competing to recruit the same people to do the same work in response to the new Regulations; and

d)      asked how the consultation on the new Administration Strategy was progressing, Mrs Chambers advised that the Employers Forum would meet on 9 December to start this and would then review the feedback and adjust work accordingly. It was hoped that the new Administration Strategy would be ready to be implemented on 1 April 2023. Mr Buckland added that a report on the new Administration Strategy would be presented to the committee’s March meeting;

e)      asked what would happen to payment due to any of the 150,000 pensioners affected who had passed away since the McCloud judgement, Mrs Chambers confirmed that any payment due would be paid to their estate.  Guidance on this would be included in the new Regulations; and

f)        asked if the Kent Pension Fund had considered re-employing retired pensions administrative staff to help manage this and any other peaks of workload, Mrs Chambers advised that options were being examined.

2.        It was RESOLVED that the update on work being undertaken by the pensions administration team be noted, and that the committee’s thanks and appreciation be passed on to all staff.