A report was submitted to update the Board on administration performance and issues for the period 1^st October 2019 to 31^st December 2019.

Members noted that the content of the report had been updated to provide a wider view of the issues the Administration were handling.

With regard to staffing issues, the report  contained details of the starters and leavers during the period.

It was noted that there were two leavers from the payroll team and a third staff member had resigned in January 2020.  Because of this, the Customer Centre and the Benefits team had taken responsibility for a number of functions previously handled by the payroll team to ensure there was enough capacity within the payroll team to focus on that function.  The formal review of payroll was scheduled for the summer of 2020.

The Board were informed that sickness absence during Q3 had been much higher than average.  It was hoped that this had been caused by seasonal infections; officers would monitor the situation.

The Head of Pensions Administration informed the Board that the Pensions Administration restructure was now complete and there were 12 FTE vacancies which were being externally recruited.

The report detailed the case work performance and it was noted that whilst completion of priority work had remained at around 90%, overall performance had dipped during the current financial year.  It was anticipated that a combination of the recruitment to vacant posts together with the application of improved automation would lead to an improvement in case work performance from the beginning of the new financial year.

The report also contained details of the cases outstanding and highlighted three key areas (deferreds, transfers in and aggregations) which would be the focus of attention once the new staff had been appointed.

The Board commented on the 3768 deferred cases which were pending awaiting information from external parties and requested a breakdown of what they represented and how the situation was being dealt with in the next report.

With regard to the additional information about reporting performance against statutory disclosure requirements, Members were informed that SYPA was currently testing some additional reporting which would provide the level of detail requested and it was hoped that this would be available for the next Board meeting.

With regard to the consultation on the proposal to switch to collecting employer contributions by direct debit, there had been 10 responses.  Seven were concerned about the tight deadline to submit monthly returns, two employers were against the switch but gave no reason for this and one requested more engagement around how the arrangements would work.

J Bailey informed the Board that the deadline for submissions had originally been set at the 5^th of each month, but there was flexibility in this and could be revised to the 9^th or 10^th of the month.

The Board felt that they could support the switch to collecting employer contributions by direct debit as long as flexibility was incorporated within the process.

The Authority had continued to survey members who had recently retired to understand their experiences and the report contained details of the results for October, November and December 2019.

The quality of documentation issued to members at retirement was also being reviewed to simplify the language and presentation of information.  The Head of Pensions Administration thanked Andrew Gregory for his assistance with this review.

Members noted that the number of members registering to use the online portal continued to increase but still remained a relatively low proportion of overall membership.  The campaign to encourage members to register would continue.

RESOLVED:

(i)     That the report be noted.

(ii)     That additional information regarding the outstanding deferred cases be included in the next Administration Update.

(iii)    That the Board support the switch to collecting employer contributions by direct debit providing flexibility was incorporated within the process.