Agenda item

This paper provides a summary of activity in key areas of pension administration for the Council’s Pension Fund.

Eleanor Dennis (Head of Pensions) presented the report and gave a summary of activity in the key areas of pension administration for the Council’s Pension Fund. Challenges included increasing complex legislation, data challenges, limited resources, and difficulty in engaging with employers, which meant some issues would take months or years to resolve fully.

Councillor Florian Chevoppe-Verdier expressed his concerns around the service and the lack of information provided by LPPA. Referring to page 40 of the agenda pack, he asked for further clarification on the type of complaints received. In response Eleanor Dennis explained that she had requested more details around the nature of the complains from LPAA. However, from her understanding majority of the complaints received related to the service delivered by LPPA. Once this information was available it would be circulated to the Committee.

Action: Eleanor Dennis

Councillor Adam Peter Lang commented that it was unsatisfactory to note that LPPA were currently unable to confirm when they would be in a position to clear the backlog of the 25 unresolved complaints. He requested that a discussion be held with LPPA so that a timeline was provided of when these would be resolved. Eleanor Dennis confirmed that this had already been requested by LPPA and that she would confirm outside of the meeting once she had received a response. .

Action: Eleanor Dennis

The Chair noted that it seemed as though LPPA were struggling with capacity issues throughout their organisation. He asked how confident Officers were, that there was a suitable plan in place to deal with these types of challenges going forward. In response Eleanor Dennis noted that it was vital for LPPA to deliver their core KPI’s. However, she felt that they were not focusing enough on BAU  their strategy. She would continue to hold discussions  with the LPPA management team  to work towards  recovery .

Councillor Florian Chevoppe-Verdier noted that it would be useful for the Committee to determine how many hours the Pensions Administration Team spent supporting LPPA and was concerned regarding the cost of the LBHF pension team resourcing propping up the LPPA service. In response Eleanor Dennis explained that the Team continued to record issues including bereavement cases and fed these back to LPPA to resolve and improve. Disappointingly , the Team was on average going back to LPPA around 4 to 5 times per issue.

Peter Parkin (Co-opted Member) asked what measures had been taken by the Committee to hold LPPA accountable. Members outlined that the Committee had scrutinised LPPA very strongly over the past year. LPPA had also been invited to extraordinary meetings to present to the Committee. The Committee continued to keep them under review and scrutiny. In addition, the formal letter draft addressed to the Managing Director outlining all of the concerns that was with the Chair for comment would also be circulated to the Pensions Committee.

Peter Parkin (Co-opted Member) noted that Eleanor Dennis and her Team had been very helpful in providing direct pensions advice to his members. He noted that it was helpful for members to have an inhouse team to discuss their pension queries who were knowledgeable and responsive.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee noted the update.