Agenda item

A report of the Director of Finance was presented to provide Board Members with information on items scheduled in the work plan for consideration at the current meeting. A copy of the work plan was attached at Appendix A to the submitted report.

At its meeting on 19 July 2021 the Board agreed an updated work plan for the coming months and years which set out areas for the Board to discuss or consider at subsequent meetings). These were typically areas that the Pensions Regulator and/or the Scheme Advisory Board had identified as important for Local Pension Boards to consider.

Record Keeping

The Pensions Regulator’s website contained the following overview of what record keeping means for pension scheme trustees and those running public service pension schemes: “As a pension trustee or someone running a public service scheme you are responsible for making sure the scheme has good records. This is still the case if you use a third party administrator.

To manage a scheme properly you need to make sure it has accurate, complete and up-to-date records. You should have controls and processes in place to maintain these standards.  Failure to maintain complete and accurate records means you are at risk of not meeting your legal obligations. Poor record-keeping can have a huge impact on members and can be very expensive for your scheme if things go wrong due to bad or

missing data.”  (www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/trustees/contributions-data-andtransfers/record-keeping).

The Regulator recommended that those responsible for pension schemes (in the case of Teesside Pension Fund - Middlesbrough Council as administering authority) undertook the following actions in relation to record keeping:

• Regularly review scheme data, notify the Pensions Regulator about data quality through the annual scheme return;
• Work with the administrator to improve data where it is not good enough to run the scheme effectively;
• Take an active role in monitoring data quality and accuracy and the controls around it.
• Discuss record-keeping at meetings.

The Regulator emphasised that good record keeping was vital so that:

• Defined benefit schemes (such as the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)) had accurate funding plans in place.
• Defined contribution schemes could process core financial transactions promptly and accurately (this had some relevance to the LGPS in relation to Additional Voluntary Contributions which were provided on a defined contribution basis).
• All schemes could meet pensions dashboards requirements.

The types of records required to be kept included those relating to:

• Meetings and decisions of the body/bodies responsible for running the scheme.
• Scheme documents including trust deeds and rules (for the LGPS these are regulations, not trust deeds and rules), and details of any rule (regulation) changes.
• Scheme member information, including common data and scheme-specific data.
• All contributions received.
• All other payments to and from the scheme.
• Transfers of members’ benefits and related assets.

The Council, as administering authority for the Fund, was responsible for maintaining all of the types of records. With the exception of records of meetings and decisions (which were maintained by the Council’s Democratic Services team and, where possible, published on the Council’s website) and the scheme regulations (which were maintained on the national LGPS website www.lgpsregs.org), the other records were maintained on the Council’s behalf by XPS Administration (XPS), the outsourced pensions administration provider.

XPS provided an administration report every quarter to the Pension Fund Committee and the Teesside Pension Board which included information on data quality regarding details of common data and scheme specific data and any late contributions received from scheme employers.

Areas of improvement to data quality had been raised with XPS and discussed by the Committee and Board, including engaging a third party specialist provider to assist in finding correct home addresses in relation to ‘gone away’ deferred scheme members, and continuing to work to improve the coverage of scheme specific data.   XPS was also due to launch monthly data exchange with scheme employers, piloting this with a small number of employers initially.  This would improve the quality and accuracy

of the member data held by the Fund and help prepare the Fund for submitting data to pensions dashboards.

Resolving Internal Disputes

Where an individual was unhappy with a decision made or an act or omission by a scheme employer or the administering authority in relation to their rights or benefits in the Fund, they could formally raise a dispute under the two stage Internal Dispute Resolution Procedure.

The leaflet attached at Appendix B set out the full details of the Procedure. The Procedure was summarised in the submitted report. 

XPS provided information on complaints, dispute cases and any cases referred to the Pensions Ombudsman within their quarterly administration update to the Pension Fund Committee and the Teesside Pension Board.

AGREED that the information provided was received and noted.