Transcript

Right, welcome everyone. It's ten o'clock so we can start. Some housekeeping before we get going. Can committee members and anyone presenting speak clearly and directly into their microphones? That's really important for the Chairman because he's deaf, so I really need you to speak into the microphones. No fire drills expected, so in the event of a fire alarm sounding, everyone present is asked to leave by the nearest exit and assemble at the top car park, reporting to a member of the building engagement team. This meeting is being webcast live and it is open to the public, though I have the right to suspend filming if the need arises. Please ensure all mobiles are switched off or turned to silence. That's the housekeeping, so my first pleasant duty is to welcome a new board member, Lisa Fogarty-Scott. Lisa, you're very welcome. Glad to have you here. I hope you enjoy the meetings. My much sadder news is to tell you that David Lewis has been forced to step down from the board and indeed all council engagements owing to ill health. He will not be returning to this board, so at least not in the near future. In the meantime, we will need therefore to appoint a new vice chairman and processes are being gone on to determine that as I speak. I'm sure you'll all want to join with me in thanking David for everything he's done for the board and to wish him all the best and hope that he recovers. And of course, we will also need to appoint another member of the board as we are one light with David having stepped down. So item one, apologies for absence. We've had apologies from Trevor Willington and we know that Brendan Bradley will be joining us online. I can see his initials on the screen, so I know he's with us. So welcome, Brendan. Item two, the minutes from the previous meeting. They're on pages seven to 16 of the papers. Does anyone have any comments on the minutes or can we accept those as clear, accurate minutes of the meeting? I'm taking silence as a sense. Item three is declarations of interest. Do we have any declarations of interest, normal financial ones? No, thank you. Item four, questions and petitions. We have received none. So I can move on to item five, which is the glossary action tracker and forward plan, or I think now is called the program of works. That's on pages 17 to 42 of the papers. The glossary is the same glossary that we have every meeting. Very handy, very helpful thing to have, but I don't think we need to run through all the pages of it. The action tracker and the program of works start on page 37. I'm going to ask Neil if he has any more that he wants to add to those. I'd also ask if anyone has any comments on the action tracker and the program of works, not the forward plan. Thank you, Chair. I need to say that although we have a number of standing items, the items for further discussion will be informed by the agreement of strategic plan and the accompanying business plans. So it will be a discussion in advance of the next meeting. I don't have any further comments on the actions and I open to questions. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on those? Or can we take those as being this is basically what we're doing and what we've done, so we can move forward from that. Thank you very much. So we now move on to item six, which is item six, which is the summary of the pension fund committee meeting of the 13th of September. Nick Harrington is with us. Welcome, Nick, to the chairman of the committee. These are on pages 43 to 49. They are a perfectly reasonable summary. I'm sure you've read them. Neil, do you want to comment further on any of these items? I'll write to the Chair if the Chair's got any comments. Nick, do you want to add anything to what was written on these pages? Thank you. Just to, I think, emphasise how well funded we are in a percentage term. But I think the majority of that or a significant element is the expectations of future returns. So there's always a certain amount of judgement in relation to that, but we are pleased with that. Performance is good, although a little behind benchmark. And I mean, one of the key reasons for that is in the US, there's a large concentration in what they call the Magnificent Seven. And if you're not fully invested in those, then there does tend to be some elements of underperformance. And I mean, there's just such a huge concentration and risk in that element. At our meeting, we do delve into individual investment areas. And this last meeting, we looked at the real estate portfolio. I'll probably leave it there and open for questions. Just a comment from me. The expectation of future returns is what in the old days we used to call the discount rate, which is the same thing. And of course, that just moves around with interest rates, as we know. It doesn't affect anything to do with the assets per se. So that's why that's so high. As you said, the funding rate becomes so high because of that. The recent election in the United States, which we don't think could have passed any of us by that has taken place, and we now have or will have President Trump. Do we see that having any effect, particularly on the Magnificent Seven or any other US stocks? I'm asking you to be clear about it, Nick. Well, we did see quite a tick up in US stocks once the election had been decided. But I'm afraid this is crystal ball territory. I don't know if Neil wants to add anything from his work. I'm also not a tea-leaf reader of any great recruit. But I did share with members over in the week our Mercer investment consultants view. I think the summary of that, which I put in my weekly update, was there are additional tower risk, which we will need to consider. There is potential higher returns from Trump's proposals regarding tax. But there are also potential risks for a more mercantilist type of approach to economic policy. So we will be considering that with our advisors as part of our risk considerations. OK, thank you. Well, we'll wait and see. Does anyone have any comments on that or any other aspect of the minutes that we have from the Pension Fund Committee? I think they're reasonably straightforward. No? In which case, we're asked that we note the content of the report, which we can do. I don't think we have any recommendations to make to you at this particular time, other than let's see what Trump does. So I move on to item seven, which is improving the governance of the Surrey Pension Fund. This is an update. This is an important item. There's been quite a bit going on in this area. The report itself is quite short, with all the detail that is in the annex. I'm going to turn to Neil, if I may, to take us through what's going on here, because it is important, even though it's quite short, the report. Thank you, Chair. The report details an issue that we've previously discussed at the Board, and that was also endorsed by our committee. And that's really understanding and defining the relationship between the Pension Fund and the County Council as two dependent but separate entities. The proposals that were approved by committee and then further taken to County Council were to formally really recognize those distinct relationships, to include an additional line in the terms of reference of the Pension Fund Committee to formally recognize this conflict of interest, and to change the scheme of delegations so that pension fund activities are delegated to officers who are dedicated to working on the pension fund. I don't have other non-committed and non-specialist duties in the County Council. This was approved by a full council at its last meeting. I might get on to this in a minute without wishing to crow or talk about tea leaves. Part of the government's Pensions Review consultation response yesterday specifically talks about these two items that we've previously approved. So we have anticipated what we consider to be good governance practice. And the government finally issued a consultation on the good governance regulations. I'm happy to take any questions on that. It's a brief summary, and I take the report as read. We had independent advice from Barnett Waddingham, and the principal advisor on that is previously head of the LGA Pensions Team, Jeff Houston. We were also responding to advice from internal audit. We are reflecting the Scheme Advisory Board's good governance guidance, which will now ultimately become regulation. And we're also reflecting the pension regulators' new general code of practice. So all of this will improve the governance arrangements of the pension fund. Is it worth adding to that, just to remind ourselves that the pension fund represents 300 and something or other employees, not just the Surrey County Council? So it is quite significant that it should be separate and seems to be separate in the same way as in the private sector. The trustees of pension schemes are more and more separate from their sponsoring employer and more difficult for that employer, should he wish to do so, to control them in any way. So it's sort of moving in a direction that one would expect it to, and I think it's quite important that it does. Especially if you take it added to that, Neil's comments with regard to government's governmental guidance, we like to call it, as to how we might do things in the future. It's much more important that we remain as independent as possible to be able to deal with all of that. Does anyone have any comments? We're not intending to go through the report line by line. I think it's all, you know, it's been summarised. Does anyone have any comment on this or any thoughts? Are we happy with the way this is, the direction that this is moving? Good. In which case, I think we are going to note the content of the report. So that's item seven. Item eight, we're back into the sort of the detail of our own operations here, is the Surrey Pension Team overview. Again, this is a brief report. It starts on page 75 and it includes the dashboard. It is an overview of all the things that are happening in the Surrey Pension Team. Again, Neil, are you going to comment on this? And is Nicole with us, if needed? So, yes, I just will highlight some of the areas. Ultimately, this is an overview. And if members do have specific questions on this paper, they actually will be addressed further in the agenda. So this is an executive overview. So I ask that we may defer questions to the specific areas of the agenda, if that's okay. Just because it has been mentioned already, the value of the fund has increased, as has the funding rate in accordance with, as the Chair's laid out, it's actually increased in the discount rate. That's what needs to be changed. On paragraph one, it's the increase in discount rate rather than the decline in discount rate. We just need to make sure we can change that. No, I'll get it changed. Paragraph one, it's an increase in the discount rate, not a decline, which reduces the value of our businesses. Yes, indeed. I thought we got changed. I didn't pick that up, so apologies for that. Just on the overview again, Tom and Collette can provide detail later in this report. The service delivery figures are, I think it's fair to say, extremely positive. I'm not going to, I will allow Tom to talk a bit closer to that because it's an extremely commendable improvement in our service delivery figures. And the legacy, both from the point of view of the service delivery legacy, which is in old money we call backlog, but as we inherited it, we call it legacy. That has reduced, again, I'll let Tom talk to the numbers on it. It's been an excellent piece of work from Tom's legacy team there. And equally in the accountant governance team, we've made exceptionally good strides in conjunction with the work we've done on the external audit to clear up some of the backlog areas there. And item three deals with the outstanding accounting and governance legacy work, which is a bit of a new one to this board, I think. But there's going to be more on this later on in the report. And indeed, we'll recall, I think, to the external audit report, which was issued two or three days ago as a separate item. Yeah, we have discussed this offline. And I'm happy, actually, that we don't go into any more detail than is in the risk report. But perhaps you can give some color to what the legacy items are made up of and the progress we've made to resolve them. Certainly. Thank you. Excuse me. The legacy items relate to line items from the old ledger system that was transferred to the new ledger system and us trying to clear those off, identify what they are and clear them off. Much of the progress behind the scenes in the accounting governance team. So that was 61 percent of the line of the items identified cleared those items that still left to clear. We are working with EY and identifying what those are and agreeing with them how we can clear them off in this current year so that they are not carrying forward into future years. Thank you, Colette, for what it's worth. I couldn't hear a word of that, but I'm sure everybody else could. It was on, but you're just too far away from it. For me, because I'm deaf. It's not you. But I know what you're saying anyway. Does anyone have any comments on that item before we turn to the dashboard itself? Oh, yes, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I just also just just finally, which is paragraph five, the poll surveys is a the most significant way in which we measure our progress of our strategic plan in line with our, if you like, our people and cultural elements. So that is owned by the change team, and I'm sure that Nicole will give that further color as we move through. But the headlines are that we have, again, had positive results and that we are building on the work that's already been done from the point of view of developing the team and producing the culture that we need to succeed in our strategic plan. I'm happy to take any questions on this paper. And as I say, the dashboard is attached to it. So any questions on that and the metrics that come up on the, on the prevention team dashboard? I think now they, it's clear what this dashboard is doing. I still think we can't get into it, can we, unless we're a member of the Surrey County Council. We can't. It's not. It's what I'm looking for. It's not something we can access and look into the background of it. We can only operate on these printed papers, unless we're actually a Surrey County Councillor or an officer. And that's still the case as far as I know. Okay, so I'm hearing nothing. So we note the content of the report and indeed the dashboard. That's item eight. Item nine, I think we go into a bit more detail. We welcome Nicole. This is the change program update. Nicole is online. Hi, Nicole. Hi. And I'll let you take us through the report and highlight anything that we can't read for ourselves. Fantastic. Thank you. So I know that you would have had a chance to all have a look through it. So I'm only going to try and pick out some highlights or briefly summarize the points that are made. So starting from a communications perspective, the team have sent out everything that you would expect. We also have quite an ambitious plan of activities that we're trying to do in order to amplify our presence with a number of different stakeholders. And those plans continue to be rolled out as well. Since the last meeting, we have actually won the Impact Investing Principles Adopter at the Pensions for Purpose Awards. So that was a fantastic achievement. Congratulations on that. Yes. And there's been a number of different communication moments, if you like, that have been capitalized on. So the Pensions Awareness Week would be a good example of that. And as part of this amplifying our presence plan, you'll also see some video interviews that are coming out on LinkedIn. So if you are a person that is following us on LinkedIn, I would hope that you are. Please do go ahead and have a look at them. There's an interview from me and there's also one from Lloyd now there as well. So slightly spoiler alert, we have this kind of curious situation where we're always reporting in the past. But there is actually two videos online there now for you to have a look at. And they're very brief. They're only sort of two minutes long. So they're not going to take a huge amount of your time, but they do give a really good summary of the types of things that we're up and doing. And so if you'd like to have a look at those and particularly give them a like, that is great. Because that means that will signal to also to all of the other people in your network that the pension team is talking about something. From a learning and development point of view, so Neil mentioned the Staff Pulse Survey. Again, we're in this curious situation that actually those results closed, the survey closed in June and the results are now being reported to you. And we're well into November. In fact, in the next couple of weeks, we're about to launch the December survey. So I was really, really pleased with this set of results in June because it was only, I think, the third time we had run the Pulse Survey. A Pulse Survey is something that really just gives you an indication of how people are feeling in our organization. And we had a fantastic first year from a transformation perspective. And that's when you kind of really are able to capitalize on all the low hanging fruit and seeds. So we had great progress and it was always going to be, if you like, that tricky second album year. And so I was I was a bit nervous about how the results would be. But actually, we had maintained all of the gains that we had made in the first year. So I was really, really pleased about that. And we had continued to show improvement, particularly around development of our people, which is something that is incredibly important. The pension fund won't run without them. So for our people to feel that they're being supported in their development is great and to continue to see the improvement there. I was actually at a conference this week where they said that 81 percent of people when applying for roles want to ensure that they're going to get development as part of the role that they go for. So although it may seem in some ways not so important as the 60 numbers that my colleague Lloyd does, of course, it's really, really important for those people who are actually making all of this happen. There were, of course, some things that we can do better on. There always is, you know, and we are tackling all of the things that we came across there. There weren't a huge number, but as part of continuing plans anyway, we had been looking at how we can increase awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion. We've had a number of different lunch and learns on neurodiversities, for instance. So that's people who think differently. They might have autism and so forth. Allyship, which is about challenging thinking of privilege and working in solidarity with marginalized groups. And indeed, yesterday at the PSLT, we had the council's expertise in this area come and speak to the team as part of an ongoing relationship that we want to have in that area. And of course, all of you who came to the board and committee residential during this report period, we were obviously just planning it. But you actually know because of this lag situation with these reports that we went, you've actually had it. And I have seen all of the feedback and it's excellent. So always a few things that we can tinker and improve. But we will be looking to have another one next year as a result. And we may have some new people to speak to then as well. So that would be great to do around June time once all of that is clear. So you will see Jenny reaching out to you all looking for new dates. Other than that, we've been doing some further work with our extended leadership team, as you would expect. And we've begun to think how we can be more conscientious about the way we approach continuous improvement and the way that we both collect suggestions for improvement and then act on them. So those are some of the things we're working on at the moment. From a project management perspective, we do have a number of projects going on. This list has reduced as we've been trying to become more targeted with what we invest our time in. Of course, they include the massive projects that are required from a regulatory perspective, McLeod and GMP being the most significant there. We are, however, also looking to see how we can get greater visibility of everything that is going on so that we can really prioritize what we are working on so that we can take on some of those ideas that come out from the continuous improvement program. In terms of transformation, we are wanting to do more on the digital side of things. How can we transform our organization using digital as a tool? And it's not a capability that we have in-house to really understand how best we can do that. So we are looking for some consultants to come and help us advise on that. At this point, we were just stuttering the tendering for that. Obviously, in reality, today we are nearly through and we think we have a solution for a couple of vendors that are going to help us with that. I won't mention the governance proposal because Neil has already talked to that and it was a separate paper, so I'm not going to speak to that at all. But we have continued to evolve our culture as well. The key thing that we have done there is help people understand how they all fit together and what happens when the pound coin, it used to be the pound note, but now it's the pound coin, comes into the organization and how does it move through the salary pension team just so that everybody could really see and visualize that journey and understand how they interact with it. And then finally, very successfully over the summer time, we set up a social committee for the first time. And there was a number of different rounders events which were very popular and became very competitive. And there's some more events planned on that. I know that they've also been looking to go and see a pantomime at Christmas and so forth. So that's been really, really successful. And you'd be most welcome to join us if you'd like to join us for any of those events. It was fantastic this week to see Jeremy and actually at the offices as well. So you're always welcome. That's really all I wanted to highlight. Can I open to any questions? Sorry, thank you very much for that, Nicole. I open it to the board for any questions or thoughts. I think you've impressed them into silence with a huge degree of detail, not a huge degree, a degree of detail with telling all the things that are going on. What I'm getting out of all of this is a sense of energy and urgency to move things on, which is absolutely wonderful. And everything does seem to be moving in the right direction. I'm not sure I'll make it at the pantomime, but we'll see how that goes. But you say there's going to be a consultant on the digital transformation. What sort of consultant might that be? I've spent most of my life as a consultant. I don't trust them. So we're looking for most likely two consultants because as we've briefed them, people have specialisms. And we want one consultant to be able to help us populate the outer years of our digital transformation strategy. So we've got quite a lot of things that we want to do in the next sort of three to 12 months. A large number of them are in Tom's area. And Tom and I are working really closely on this. And for those things, we don't need as much expertise because we've got a lot of support either from strategic partners like Haywood and so forth. But then for the outer years, again, this is a capability that we don't have in-house is really understanding what digital technologies are coming in the world and how might they be useful and applicable to a pension setting. So one area that we'd like them to explore, for instance, but it's just one area, is how could we use artificial intelligence more effectively in our organization? And interestingly, again, if you start to look at populations, this conference I went to this week, it said that 52% of 11 to 25 year olds have actively used AI every day. So it is something that is coming our way. And we actually don't have a huge amount of knowledge about it. And we really need to. So we're looking for a consultant to do that first part, if you like, which is help us understand what's coming and how it might be applicable. And then from a second part, some of those activities that I said were the lower hanging kind of fruit do require a technical solution that is beyond our current capability. And we would need somebody to advise how we could do it. They're relatively simple automation tasks that we would like to do. And an example, without trying to go into too much detail, is when we get money in from our employers, they fill in some information about what they have sent us and that goes into our bank account. But it is in many cases quite often a manual reconciliation between what's turned up in the bank account and what they actually told us they sent. And quite often they don't match. And so there's that manual intervention that we think could be solved by some type of intervention that would automate that. So that's just an example of something we could do. We're very aware of what the issue is. We just don't quite know how to solve it because we don't have that capability. We have been talking to our colleagues in SCC as well to see if there's anything they can do to support us. But it's likely that if we want to do that quickly, we would want to go externally to get that support. Thank you, Nicole. That's extremely helpful. Do I have any further comments from the board on this? Otherwise, I think, as ever, we're going to be recommended that we note the contents of the report. And thank you for the delivery of all of that. Can I just make a comment, Chair? Yeah, yeah, sorry. So just for the board, really, this paper is designed to give the board visibility, really, of what's going on under the bonnet. And hopefully, the board can see the common thread through to our strategic plan and our mission to deliver improved customer services. I hope it's useful to see that and allows you to provide that level of scrutiny. Yes, it certainly is. But I think the board will agree that it certainly is. Nick, yeah. Yes, I don't know if you're going to look at the projects part of this, but just to one, it's reported as completed. I think the information is rather historic. This is on page 91 because it does talk about, I mean, in reality, we've had an RI policy for quite a while. We have done a sort of major update. And it does talk about a member consultation may take place. I just want to remind the board that we have done a major consultation. We had about 7,000 responses from members, employees, et cetera. So I just really think that should be corrected for the record. Thank you. Yeah, totally fair. Sorry, that seems like it slipped through somewhere. Yeah. I'm not quite sure why. Guilty for not picking that up on the grounds that you said it was completed. So I must have just brushed over it, but you're quite right. Thank you, Nick. So having said that, so we are recommending that we note the content of the report as ever, which I think we have done. I'm going to move on then to item 10, service delivery overview, which starts on page 93. This covers all of the main admin, if I call it that, items going on. We'll talk a bit more, no doubt, about the GMPs and the cloud and various other matters. But I'm going to hand over to Tom, who's going to take us through it and highlights the things that are going on, if I may. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Yes, I'll take some highlights, and then if there's any questions, by all means, fire away. So just starting on page 93 and 94, looking at the performance for the quarter. So I am pleased that there has been an overall increase in our performance of 7%, so we've moved 85 to 92. That's looking at an average of all casework at that time. There's been some great improvements in that we've exceeded our performance with transfers, refunds, deferred benefits, and the acknowledgement of members passing away. Equally, with retirement and ill health cases, they've achieved or exceeded, respectively, in their quarter. So certainly everything we were hoping would happen in this quarter is going in the right direction. There are still some areas, when you look at it from a quarter basis, where there could be some improvements. That centers around the survivors' pensions and death benefits, for example. But I think what this probably doesn't show is the trend in the quarter itself. So for July, August, and September, it's been gradually improving. And remember, we made some changes to our benefits team in that we took away them being siloed for immediate and future benefits and blended them. So they had a more rounded caseload. And that has seen, as I mentioned at the recent away day, that September we've achieved or exceeded all our targets. So from that point of view, they've all gone green. And you would look at them on the annexes here on page 101. And I'm pleased to say this is a bit of a spoiler for October. Everything has been achieved in October as well. So that's two months in a row. November looks like it's going in the same direction. So the consistency we want to bring back to the team is there. It's certainly all going in the right direction. I've rightly so acknowledged that with the team to sort of thank them for their efforts and their commitment. And they're all in the same position we are. We're not going to celebrate too early, but we are going to build on the positivity that we've seen in the last three months. I hate to say this, but it's all looking pretty good, isn't it, really? When it crosses one's fingers, it doesn't want to get to complacent, as you said. But it does seem that these various things that have been put into place are working. The backlogs are being cleared and the cases are being dealt with. And I long may it last. Does anyone have any comments or questions for Tom? William? Thank you, Chair. First of all, congratulations. I mean, it's a terrific ongoing performance. We hear it every time. And we heard it at the away day as well. So what I've got to say is in no way going to detract from that. But when you start changing marginal improvements in efficiency, the cost effectiveness of doing it goes down. It's easy to get 50 to 60 improvement, but 98 to 99 becomes more difficult. And I don't have a feel for where we are on that curve. And I just wonder whether we're almost reaching the maximum efficiency consistent with it being worth the money needed to achieve that efficiency. I don't have a feel for that or whether there's a whole load of headroom still to come. It's just a comment. No, and it's a fair comment because it's one that I do ask myself is that at what point do we then, you know, you have to then start looking away from people because there's only so much people can do in any given day. I think that probably leans into the work we're doing in the coal around the digital transformation and what are the self-service tools or the digital tools that might help us get there. And I think it will probably come in the next paper, but online retirements, which we mentioned previously, is a great example of that where it completely eliminates half of a process, which actually eliminates the need for part of those KPIs that we're working to. So I think that's where we need to start looking for that. Taking it to that next level is what's out there and what systems and processes can we improve. So I think that's where the efforts will probably go to now. I think for the team it's about, like we say, consistently hitting those numbers and then it's for us to kind of help them find it to the next level. I think that's what I was picking up from Nicole's report on the change management. That's what that change management is doing all the time is just is getting that extra degree of improvement with it all. But good, Neil. It's a really helpful question and thank you for raising it. So we are, as you've laid out, we are looking to improve people's systems process. We will also, as we iterate our business plans, our strategic plan, we'll be looking at how we might bring partnerships into that. We might work more effectively with partners. But also, and it's for the committee to sign off our strategic plan, but also we will be challenging the consensus of our customer delivery metrics. We want to really understand what our customers want. At the moment, our KPIs and the performance, I don't want to detract from it in the least, but Tom and I are on exactly the same page. What we do need to really get under the bonnet of is what our customers want and are we delivering that or are we delivering a set of KPIs 100% on stuff that we're not 100% sure that they want to be delivered. So that's the next iteration of our strategic plan. Tom, do you want to add any more to that or indeed to any comments on the annexes in your report? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think the annexes just obviously give the visual representation of what's going on in the team. I mean, I think Annex, I think some page 103, which is the trend analysis, that's just is the one that gives you that obviously representation of where things have gone in the last four quarters. And hopefully you'll see that you can see that from the sort of it's in the color version. It's the green is what we're looking for. And there's more of it in this quarter, which is what we want to see. I'm just thinking the we don't normally talk about them much, but Alex, for you've got a list of the complaints. I mean, considering the size of the membership, I always think this is a very small number of complaints and it doesn't seem to be anything particularly consistent within them. So it's not pointing up anything that's esteeming. It's just kind of stuff happens when you're administering a pension scheme. But would you want to add anything to that? No, no, I don't think we should pass it by, but I don't think it's necessarily. No, yeah, I mean, there isn't. I mean, I think it does lean back to what Neil was saying there is that we we do want to understand the trends and it's not and it's what do our customers want, which that's what you can do on the proactive front, but also understanding the trends of the issues that are coming through. We need to make the most of that data. So we are looking at kind of the best way in which we can do that and what sort of resources we would need to to look at the analytics in that detail. Right from the complaints perspective, you know, we obviously we want zero. That's the way we're sort of programmed. But as you say, from the amount of work going through, the numbers are minimal. There are some of the cases mentioned in the main paper around there. There are some IDRPs with the ombudsman. There's a sort of a handful of those underway as well. But obviously, these are things that we want to eliminate and learn from. We obviously have to deal with them at the time that we've got them. OK, thank you. And do we need to say anything about the overseas pensioner check? It's just that we've got a new service. Yeah, no, I'll go through a few more things for you, Tim. Yeah, so just just a nod towards the customer relationship team, really. They are there at the front the front end of this all the time, taking all the calls, all the queries. And it's just just to acknowledge again, it's been a really solid month for them. They've taken a little over 10,000 calls or emails in that time, which is quite a similar number to what they have every quarter, which is which is good. Which means we've got we've got we know we're sort of which is consistent. We can plan for that. But they they're in their first point of contact as it's sitting at 92 percent, which, you know, that's answering the query there. And then for a member, you know, it's just to acknowledge that it's a really good number to be at. So it's just to make sure, you know, we're highlighting all the positive work they do because they just played just as important role as they do the back office. If we look at the touch on the GMP, which is on page 97, obviously, this is this has been around for some time. I can now confirm that we've agreed a I mentioned in there that we were talking through a third party supply, which we know we've had sort of multiple of these throughout this project. We're actually with I've got an agreement now in place with Mercer, who actually were doing the data work anyway. And it was kind of subbed by APTIA to Mercer. So we've kind of got it to a point where we're talking to straight straight without a middle middle management in between, I suppose. So we're in a position to start work on the deferred so we can get that information loaded into the system. We're comfortable with that. Few exception cases that need to be investigated. And then it's turning that what the work they're now doing is looking at the pensioner data. So it's going to we're going to rerun those reports, make sure we give them the information they require. That will go back through a calculation tool to come back to us in the new year so that we can review that and hopefully upload as much of it as possible. And where there's some cases which we are expecting there to be a full out of that, you know, this is large amounts of data. But we will make sure we're resource to to deal with that as and when we can. Very similar with McLeod, actually. And the team there's a designated team working on this. They've done a phenomenal amount of work in the testing and reviewing the data. They're edging that forward more and more. We have indicative numbers as to what what we could be looking at that require work at this at this moment in time. So we are looking at somewhere in the region of region of about eighteen hundred to two thousand cases that will need an underpin. But that they are indicative. So that's a constantly moving target that's coming out of the test system at the moment. So when that gets moved into live, it will be run in full and then we'll have a full understanding of that in the new year. But it's probably worth saying that these these projects are huge. So GMP McLeod and we talked about legacy, which I'll come on to the moment as well. There are plans being overlaid on top of each other so that we can get a good understanding of the milestones and the times in which resources will be required to do this work so that we've got some sort of capacity planning in place and we can make sure we can flex the resources to deliver all of these because they are going to run concurrently with each other. Just the way timings have gone and the way deadlines are set. So it's just worth noting we are sort of making sure that we put ourselves in the right position for that. So, yes, that sort of covers off those two. They're going to be watching brief. But obviously at the next meeting we'll have more definitive numbers on that and we'll update you on progress. Just before you leave the GMPs and McLeod, these are like the forward program of works. These are on this report every single quarter because they can't be finished for the reasons that you've explained. And we've got any sense as to for how much longer we're going to have these two items in this report. GMPs might get done into next year. The GMP one, it's probably going to run onto the summer because there will be the work that comes after the work. The bulk of the work will go in and be done for February. Then the team will move to pensions increase and then probably have to come back to some of the GMPs. So I'd like to think in the summer we can finally say goodbye to the GMP piece of work. McLeod, I'm afraid, is probably going to be with us and haunt us for quite some time. But I guess what we're looking at is this initial piece of work. The aim for that is that that will be done sometime next year, probably as we approach the autumn. Because there's work that we have to do up to a certain point of March of 2025 that we have to hit some deadlines on that. But then there's still going to be some fallout that the team will be working on. We'll be requiring some data from employers, some conversations with our system supplier, and probably the LGA as to how we deal with some of these trickier cases where you might have to unpick someone's transfers and aggregations. So this could go on for some time, the McLeod one, I think. And then it will fall into BAU where it would just become business as usual for the team. But you're still going to find that we don't quite know what the impact that that might be on each case as they're processing them. That's what I'm thinking, Tom. Here we are, and people retire all the time. And as they're coming to retire, presumably, are you having to do an individual one-off calculation to just check the McLeod bits for them as they retire? Or do you reckon you've got those under control already? No, no. So there'll be this piece of one-off work to rectify the ones that have already happened. And after that, the system will be configured and built to do this for us. However, as I think I mentioned, it's probably going to take two and a half years' worth and 10 releases to make sure that the whole system is now accounting for McLeod in all the calculations. In the meantime, you have to do a one-off fix every time someone retires. Yes, we'll run it through. And then there might be some cases where you may have to do an additional piece of investigation to make sure until we're in a point that the system is doing everything for us. Yeah. OK. Thank you. And that's the impact. We don't quite know what it will be on each case at this stage. So it will be something we'll review periodically. So we might wave goodbye to the GMPs by the end of next year, the worse of where I was. But we won't wave goodbye to McLeod for many years to come. I'm afraid not, yeah. But you might wave goodbye to it in the report, but we won't wave goodbye to it ever. Yeah. Well, like I said, it's thank you to the government for that one. Yeah, go on. OK. Yeah. So just picking up on the bottom of page 98, really, I suppose just this is a little bit later now, I know. But it's obviously just to confirm those numbers for annual benefit statements that were delivered. You can see from active it was a 94 percent and for deferred 99.95 percent. So still very good numbers. Obviously, we're aware of the issues that we're addressing with the county council in terms of the data on that front. But that continues as part of the My Surrey Stabilization Project. And it's also just worth noting the it's a very brief line in terms of the progress of the legacy case reduction. I've put there it stood at about 86 percent at the point this report was written, but it's now standing somewhere closer to 93. And so we are down to those cases where they are they are, in the words of the team, ugly. So they are very, very difficult cases now, and they're ones that are full of all sorts of things that you've got to investigate. So that's why the progress kind of slows down in this final final few. But we're still confident by the end of this year we'll be through most of those, the ones that can't be finished where there may be missing data. They'll just they will have to fall back into the team at some point. But we will find a way of having to address those possibly with assumptions made or using the data we hold on the record to reverse the better. These are the high hanging fruit of the very high hanging. That's the top of the tree for these ones, I'm afraid. Yeah. So but again, but the team have been fantastic in that. And I'm really pleased that they've been managed to keep that progress as well as the main team doing the performance as well. So it's been a really good good few months for them. Yeah. And then very lastly, just on page 99, we just wanted to highlight we've I've mentioned it previously. But we've we've taken out we've working the third party this time this time around as a sort of I wouldn't say a trial. But it's a pilot to see how that works. And we've worked with Crown agents banks that they've been partnered with us here to carry out this work. So they're doing this is all very much online using biometrics for the overseas pensioners. It's for the sort of the mortality checks. At the point on which I wrote this, there were six hundred and twelve. We've got six hundred and twelve overseas pensioners at the point. I think we had somewhere in the region of about one hundred and fifty responses. But we're actually now somewhere in around two hundred and fifty responses to that. It's up until about December. So there's constant communication with them to sort of remind them and make sure that they respond. They can still do it via paper paper format. So there's there's both options available. And it's but there's been a really good take up on the biometric side of it. Hopefully next time round I have a few more stats around how that how that's the split of that was. But so far so good. And yeah, hopefully we're expecting those months. And then the main thing is we keep communicating with them because what we don't want to do is suspend the pension because we've had no response. But obviously ultimately that's what could happen if you don't get the response. So we'll do everything we can to stop that happening. I feel sure that if you did suspend the pension, you'd get some responses pretty quickly. Yeah, that tends to be the way. Yeah. So I think that's probably an overview for me. So it's welcome to take any questions on any of the other items there. Thank you, Tom, for all of that. Then any further thoughts? Questions? Nick? Thank you, Chairman. I thought the point made by William was was very sound. You know, while we we are in the amber and red, there's not much point in in looking at our KPIs. But I think it would be worth looking now at what our standards are in terms of performance 15, 20 days, whatever it might be. And just seeing how that matches with industry standards. But I mean, if if I think we should congratulate Tom on his team and his performance. And I think a lot of it is to do with working as a team rather than pushing pressure on any individual members of staff. But, you know, moving resources, the team helping each other in achieve this performance. And I'm really I'm really very, you know, Tom should be very proud of what he's achieved and the team as well. So I just wanted to make that. But I think it'd be worth looking at the KPIs and seeing, you know, are they right? How do they compare with the industry standards? Yeah, I mean, I think Neil, Neil will come in as well. I think we will both completely agree. And I think you're right. And I think there is that possibility of, you know, and I think Neil mentioned to it, what is what are our KPIs and whether we need to challenge those, not just the ones we have in the timings, but whether there are actually other ones we should be incorporating into it from customer satisfaction. I know Neil, you've probably got a bit more there. Yeah, it's an area I'm particularly passionate about. Yes, there are there are things that we regularly have to do and that's that's fine. I'll do them. And the stuff that the industry does. So I'm quite happy about questioning what the industry is doing if we think our customers need something different. But Neil, presumably you talk to the officers and other pension funds. And have we any sense of how we do compare with them? Well, yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, we there isn't a set standard, although that is being developed through the new reporting in the annual report. So there will be, you know, lead tables, I suppose, available in the same way as we have the Section 13 actuarial way in which we can judge actuarial. It's a little apples and pears. And I'm actually more interested in, you know, in doing the work to establish whether or not those standards and leading the GPS and establishing whether those standards are right or not. This presumably ties in with what Nicole's talking about, the digital stuff as well. I just it's probably just worth adding those. Well, we we are and I've only just received the report, but we are using CM benchmarking as well now that allows us to. Sorry, I didn't quite catch that. We're using a company called CM benchmarking, which we use for the investments as well. So we're using it from an administration point of view, but it's not just administration. It looks at the communications and your digital services. So it's giving you quite a broad service. And we've got that. That's the second year that we've had that report. So it's just come in. So I need to obviously spend a bit of time now looking at it. But we are using that so that we can see where we sit amongst some of our peers within the in the old GPS, but actually within similar funds as well. So that might be offering a very similar scheme. And it just gives you an indication of where we are from a cost value as well as as performance. So, yes, that is something that we're using, obviously, as part of making sure that we're sort of giving that value for money as well. Well, we look forward to hearing more about that, presumably at the next meeting. Yes, I think we'll do some sort of summary report or certainly a high level because it's a very, very detailed report. So we'll probably find a way of being able to present it. So, yeah, yeah. I did just one thing. It's obviously Jeremy. I know like you, Jeremy came to join us on Thursday. He came to see that, you know, Wednesday. I just wonder if you wanted to. I know you. I do. I do, actually. It's interesting the conversations here. I mean, I actually saw in real time what happens when, you know, member pension schemes change payroll providers. And what happens to you, you know, when terrible data comes up and how your team responded? I mean, that was a big learning for me. The other learning I had was, you know, the legacy and so on. The other learning I had was the reconciliation stuff. I remember the two guys were sitting, you know, and, you know, looking at very great detail. And I was very, very impressed, I have to say. So what I'm interested in, you know, I think there's a high level conversation here about KPIs and so on. But what I saw with my eyes was actually what happens in real time, you know, on a Wednesday, you know, in November, when people further down the line, you know, mess up and then what your team has to do to recover. So I have to say that I was most impressed. But I came away saying that I think it should be compulsory for all members of this team to go there. Maybe one day have a meeting there because it's quite sobering, the amount of work that has to go on. So thank you for entertaining me. It was great. It was a pleasure to have you. So are you proposing, Jeremy, that we have a local Pensions Board meeting back in Dakota House? I would actually suggest that, yeah, we won't get in your way, but I actually suggest that maybe this meeting should be moved one day over there because I think it was so good. The only thing I didn't do was talk to the trainees. I was very, very interested in a variety of experiences. Go to make someone who's excellent at pensions administration. And it isn't necessarily what you might think it is on paper. And that was another thing that really impressed me. Nor is it age-related either. The other varieties of experience very much impressed me. So the next time, you know, I want to talk to the trainees, but I would suggest that we would have a meeting over there rather than sitting here in splendid isolation. Well, I think that's my view. It's only my view. Other people might have other things to say. I think we've got that. Are we happy with that? Are you happy with that job that we're all crawling all over you when you're trying to do your work? More than area for us is fine, yeah. And it's an interesting point you raised there. And I was with the head of customer relations just today. And another thing is for senior officers to have a day in actually taking customer calls. And I've sat in the office listening to these, to those taking calls and some quite difficult calls and the skill set that our team have to take. You know, we're talking about people with lifetime changing events calling them. And that skill set is fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I can only agree with that. So we've noted that. That's been taken on board and we'll work something out. Do we have any more comments on item 10? I think in which case we'll be asked to note to the report if we have and make recommendations. Well, I'm not sure we've made them to the pension fund committee, but we certainly made them to the officers as to what I think we'd like to do. And I'd take that on board, which is good. So I'm going to move on to item 11. Sorry about that. This is the risk register update. You'll remember, I think, Board, from the last meeting that Colette had said that she was going to do a lot of work on the risk register and revise it in a number of ways. This report does that, picks up on a number of things and makes some changes to the risk register. And in particular, it makes a lot of changes to the number 16 risk, which is one of the financial ones. But I'm going to pass over to you, if I may, Colette. The thing I'm talking about is the Alex 3, but I'll let her take us through the report. It's an important one. They're all important, but this is important. Thank you, Chair. And I'll try and talk a little bit louder. Firstly then, yes, I did take away that some work would be done on the risk register and we would be reviewing this. And I have to say it was a very much a team effort across the whole of the service. And that's reflected in the results that you've got in front of you at the moment. So Annex 1 details the process that we followed to undertake this review, which resulted in the 51 sub IDs being reviewed and rerated individually across the board. Annex 2 provides the detail of how we did that and how we approached it and then shows the tables as to how all the individual sub risks then were changed. And also the main addition in that we extended item 16 on the risk register, where we just had one item that covered my sorry. We then broke that down into an additional 10 sub items. What we've also attached to this as Annex 3 is the normal written summary for the my sorry individual items. So there's both a summary from the service delivery point of view and also a summary from the accounting governance point of view on the issues that we're currently experiencing and continue to experience, unfortunately, with some of the my sorry issues. The next steps on this are that we've agreed through PSLT and through our extended leadership program, extended leadership team, that we will have individual team risk registers that our managers will then feed in to understand what the risks are in each of their own individual areas. There will be monthly reviews of those individual team risks. And then those will feed up quarterly through the senior leadership team and then into the board and committee as normal. Ultimately, this will then lead to us having our own risk management strategy going forward. That's the review of what you have in front of you. It's a bit hefty, I'm afraid. Sorry about that. We will come back to this in future meetings over time. I'm happy to take any questions. Can I ask for the board to have any questions or thoughts with regard to the changes to the risk register itself? As far as I am concerned, it makes great sense, the things that have been done, especially in item 16. But any comments or thoughts on that would be welcome. I've sat in silence for the meeting so far. It's just a reflection on the fact that I think this is an outstanding board pack. And each of the items that we've been through already, I think the sense of progress that's coming through in the reporting is fantastic. So thank you for that. I think that's also true of this risk register. I think the changes in there are really positive. There were lots of threads right through all the reports, which again was just further reassurance for me that what we're getting from each element of the fund is tied together and feeding through to the work that's going on. Just on the risk register, the one thing that sort of jumped out to me as maybe not being as fully reflective of what's happening elsewhere as some of these other things was that conflict of interest work that's being done, particularly around the relationship with Surrey County Council. And my sense was maybe that could be beefed up a bit more in the risk register itself, because I think it's obviously something that appropriate attention is being given to. Work is ongoing to manage that. That's just not as clearly reflected in this document as some of the other great work that's going on. Thank you. And yes, totally agree. Behind the scenes, you're absolutely right picking up on the fact that the threads are all kind of coming together and they're all kind of crossing over. And the conflicts aspect, through the governance aspect, through the risk, through the general code of practice, it's all there coming together. So there is a little bit about conflicts in the general code of practice bit that I'm going to talk to you in a minute. But behind the scenes, we are currently working on a new conflicts policy that brings together the three policies that we currently have, which is we have a conflicts policy for our committee members. We have a separate conflicts policy for you as board members that's reflected in the terms of reference. And then we as officers and those advisors that we bring to these meetings, they also have a conflict, a separate conflicts policy. So some work is going on as we speak behind the scenes to bring those three policies together and then present one policy going forward. The time scale for that is to present to get you and the committee to agree those, probably not for December, but for March. So we will bring them back to December PFC, if we can, if we've got time, next board meeting in February and then for adoption from March onwards. And it all kind of links into the governance, new governance arrangements, general code of practice, risk register. Totally agree, Chris, yes. And just to reiterate, that wasn't a criticism at all of the way that that risk is being managed. Just really the fact that so much is going into the management of that risk. A more explicit recognition of the risk itself in the register, I thought, might be worthwhile. It was interesting to think how that would be expressed in the risk register. What is the risk? The risk that if we don't do it properly, what? Government interference is one. But rather than think about this thing on the hoof, I think it's a good point. Thank you. William, sorry. Thank you, Chair. My comment sort of builds on that. First of all, it's excellent. I sit on two other risk committees. I don't think either of them are actually as good as this. So congratulations. But they do do two things which this doesn't do and which I think are really important. The first one is, overall, do we live in a riskier place than we did when we last met? And I don't get a feel from that. If I was a risk committee member, I might do because I would be reading through the whole lot and trying to get reached out assessment. But has the world got riskier? And on top of that, all the other ones I've sat on, not just the current two, but the ones in the past, have then provided a narrative on the five most important risks, the ones that can destabilize the organization, the ones that especially are showing a change since the last time they were looked at. And so our minds are concentrated on the key risks to the organization and the overall risk environment. If I can use a slightly silly analogy, we don't worry about tripping over a badly coiled rope on deck. We actually worry about the fact that water is coming into the engine room and we're sinking. And so I think this needs, especially when it's reported up to the board, it needs a sense of has the world got riskier and should we be more on our toes? And these are the five key risks and how they're changing and how we're responding. And that requires more than being four or five lines in a table, in my experience. And I suggest that as something perhaps to think about. In this report, typically we've had a comment on the changes to the main risks. I think it's not in this one. I think precisely because Colette and her team were doing all the work to actually change the risk registers, and that's probably why it's not there. But I take your general point, has the world got riskier? It's quite a big question really. What I think, Chair, from experience is that they need to be pulled out of the background noise of the whole risk register and placed on a page of their own so that you can then have your attention drawn to them. To the big ones, yeah. And thank you, and I totally agree. And I think with drilling down by team, team area, smaller risk registers, monthly team meetings on those risks and reviewing those risks, then we can bring that out as a narrative going forward when we present each quarter. Thank you. With those thoughts on the risk register, I just wanted to pass on to Alex 3, if I may, which is the financial system update. We've got quite a lot of detail in here as to what is going on. Who would like to just summarise where we've got to on this now, because this has been the ongoing situation with Viserion Unit 4, and the impact it's had on the pensioners' team. It's a good report that sets out all the things that are happening. Is that going to be you, Colette, or Tom? I'll go first, and then the officers may fill in the gaps with any questions. There's two major parts to it. The financial area has been an area that the team have been battling with some time from the beginning to utilise this system to actually reconcile bank accounts, ensure that the money is moving and going where it's expected to go. It's been quite difficult for that to be formally recognised up until now. The stabilisation programme that's been set up has been the catalyst for surrey pensions to be put in line with the rest of the organisation. Tom, can you explain to everybody what the stabilisation programme is? Yes, of course I can. The stabilisation programme was set up by the county council to assess the Unit 4 system and bring it up to a state where it's a viable product. So it's doing what it was supposed to do and what it says it should do on the tin. It's made up of ourselves, IT, there's members of payroll, there's members of corporate, so there's corporate portfolio management. So it's got broad stakeholders, all with the goal to make sure we rectify the issues that we're all suffering. It has made a big difference because you have internal people here who really want to make it work and sort it out. The organisation around that has been really good. I think I mentioned last time, there's ring-fence budget, there's governance in place at operational level and at executive level to drive this forward. So with that in place, the areas around pensions finance has been formally recognised now as a big, big risk, not just to Surrey Pensions but actually to the county as well. Keefe has been instrumental in terms of detailing that to the programme and is currently at the moment, she's already showed what the risks are, the impacts they're having, it's now going into what are our requirements to actually utilise this system for our purposes. It's been formally recognised, it's gone to the executive board now, I think that was yesterday, where we're talking the executive of Surrey Board, so the executive leaders, and it's now been recognised and there's now work going on to understand those requirements. Then they'll look at bringing in a Unit 4 specialist to look at what we need versus the build and actually determine what the solution might be. So that's the very broad brush but there's a lot of work now to go on to try and do that. Similarly, I guess what we've been doing on service delivery, this all starts again from an accounts point of view and there's a number of different areas that you can see in the report that are hindering the team to reconcile the accounts. So the officers involved now are going to be vital to drive that forward and I think having that, it's now got the traction it requires, is the real big win there and we'll hopefully start to see some movement in that area. I think obviously then if you look at from the service delivery point of view, which is sort of much further down the road and it's probably much more granular detail at this stage because we're in sort of solution mode, but we have got to a point now where we've been waiting for some time to have a product in place where the iConnect file, so the monthly return file, can actually be uploaded. That has now gone into the live system and so has the levers extract, which is providing us the final pay. They are both now in an operational state. There are some minor adjustments still to be made, but not enough to stop us using that from the broad sense of things. So we've now got our newly set up pensioner payroll team, which I think I've mentioned before, is that we've now got, we've taken our pensions payroll back in house, so that's no longer being done by the county. And for an interim period of time, we're doing some of the employer functions to get this to a state so we can transfer that back to the county council when they're sort of in a position to do so. They're now working on those retrospective reports, which need to be run back to April and brought all the way up to current date. So they're doing that now, a lot of work going on to kind of bring that to its state. So that's ongoing. There is still a significant amount of configuration and data cleansing required from the council's side with this Unit 4 system for the purposes of this, of the pensions work and the pensions coming over. The configuration has been updated, so it's now calculating employer contributions correctly. So where people are changing roles, there's been a fix put in to make sure that that's coming over as expected. So that's been signed off and went live in October. And there's plans for the, I believe, the employee, sorry, I said that was employee contributions, sorry, employer contributions is still to be refined, so it's generally working, but there's still some anomalies in there. That's going to be due, I think, well, it was initially December, but I think that may have been bumped to January now. But they recognise that, you know, with valuation coming up, this needs to be kind of done by March. Similarly, in the fact there's a lot of data cleansing to go on where we know there are still not contributions that have been collected and sent across to ourselves, so there are still members out there where their benefits are reflected either wrong on our system or not at all. So there's still, there's been some really good progress, but again, it's one of those ones where we're getting ourselves to a product where it should be and what we should be getting. So, you know, we celebrate the successes in that the team worked really hard to get it there, but at the same time, we are just getting ourselves to a point where we're getting what we should be getting. So all in all, it's moving in the right direction. I think, you know, service delivery is further ahead in that, in getting what it requires to pay the benefits from an account side and being able to allocate the contributions. That's slightly behind still. So it could take some significant time depending on the solution, but at the same time, I think, you know, Keeva's online will probably test to this. There's going to need to be some interim solutions, even if the solution is that there's a big build change required to satisfy the pension requirements, there's still going to have to be some interim solutions put in. So all of that is on the table right now. So the positive thing is those talks are ongoing, and it's got traction, which is what we were hoping for and it's happened, so. A couple of points. For reasons that you know about, I wasn't able to be at the annual meeting last week. Did this come up there with the employers or any of this stuff? No, this particular one wasn't presented in that sense because obviously it's attested to one employer. It was on the screen, but it wasn't presented to, no. I mean, because what I'm getting now is that the County Council, A, appreciates the impact of all of this on itself, but B, and more importantly for us, appreciates the impact of this on the pension scheme and how difficult it has been, which does at least get us to the stage where we're all moving forward in the same direction, one hopes, and the problems are being looked at. And I was just going to add to that for the benefit of the board. We do still have a monthly meeting update, as Nick Harrison and myself and you Neil and Tom and other members of the Surrey staff to bring us up to date with the constant ongoing progress in this particular area to get it sorted out because Jeremy, you would have appreciated if you'd been there watching the nuts and bolts how dragging down this is for people trying to do a job when they can't get the basic information correct in the first place. So we appreciate the difficulties, Tom. Thank you for that. And we're all with you to get it sorted out. Any other comments on that? Nick, do you want to say any more about this at this stage? No, I don't. I think it's been... The report from Tom in this set of papers goes into a lot of detail. Yeah, it's good. We'd like one next month, the next report. It will keep coming. And just to say as well, and I've mentioned, Kiva did a lot in terms of the finance side and the accounts and the amount of detail has come from that area of the team. So it certainly is a joint effort in terms of producing this. But it is one we will keep doing. Thank you. Well, if there's nothing more from anyone else... Oh, sorry, Neil's going to speak. I mean, I really... I hate pushing and blame anywhere. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that the progress is made by the county council on this as well as a strategic part of the pensioner's fund. I wouldn't want that to go unrecognised. OK, then. Sorry, I wasn't unrecognising it. I was thinking that they... But it hadn't been recognised to start with. I think that's my point. It is that, which is good. And Neil will have something to say on it too. So I'm going to... Who? Where am I looking? Sorry. Thanks. Again, I, you know, repeat the kind of thanks for the work that's going in in various places to kind of work through the challenges that this has presented. How much resource within the fund is being directed towards managing this at the moment? How much do we expect that to be the case once this information is flowing through from Surrey? And the follow-up question to that is, is that something that the actuaries will take into considerate impact on service cost when they are determining things like secondary contribution rates during the valuation? So I can probably answer the first part in terms of resources. When this is flowing as it should do, it would be within normal operational costs and resources we have in place. Right now, that's not the case, and we have, obviously, as you remember, we had the legacy team that was dealing with the overall legacy. We have had to retain or re-recruit to some of those positions. Some will be to deal with this, what we call backlog 2.0. Well, it is to deal with that. So obviously, those costs will be ring-fenced, as in we have to, when I say ring-fenced, we will measure what those costs are, because it's what we need to do. There are then officers' time that's involved, and predominantly it's myself in terms of the most frequent meetings, but obviously now we've got members of my team who have been actively involved, as now is Keeva and her team. It's quite heavy. It gets heavy for a period of time, and then it goes over to the developers to do their bit, and then it comes back again. So the early bit is the hardest bit, because you've got to get it up and running. But to actually deal with the fallout on cases, there are going to be people in there, and their work is to deal with the fallout. We've obviously got that new team that mentioned about the pension and payroll team. They're the ones working on it now to bring it to a state where it can, cases can be worked on. So that will probably take up until Christmas, just to fully understand and appreciate how big that looks. And then there will be a team working on it from Christmas onwards to try and bring it down and back to the state in terms of what we want it to be for valuation. The bit I'm not sure, and I think Neil will probably know better than I will, is on how that will affect the actual, from an actuarial point of view. So, yeah, thank you Tom, and that's, I suppose what we will do is we will, well the finance team will, I say we, the finance team will allocate what resource we have expended on this particular piece. From the point of view of, we'll have the actuary evaluation update and we'll have some discussion, opportunities with the actuary, further discussion opportunities with the actuary, but the administration cost to the fund is, I mean I don't want to be glib, it's not even around an exercise. It won't be in any way material. And even if it was, it would be on the primary rather than the secondary rate. So we, I think, if we're finished on this item, we are asked to note the contents of the report, the risk register in Annex 1 and Mysari update in Annex 2. I think we also ought to note Annex 3 in particular as the summary of the financial situation from Mysari. And we're asked to make recommendations to the Pensions Fund Committee if required. I don't think we have any particular recommendations to make to the committee. So can I move on from this then now? If we've done that, thank you. So I'm moving on to item 12 which is the Pensions Regulator Code of Practice and I know you've been looking forward to this item right from the beginning of the meeting. There's a brief report there from Colette and the General Code of Practice in its position statement statement and assessment summary. Are you going to take us through this, Colette? Thank you. Thank you Chair. And yes, the General Code of Practice was published earlier this year. TPR's General Code of Practice was published earlier this year. And we've undertaken a self-assessment against the Code. If we recall, there were originally 10 separate codes applying to pension schemes across the UK. And the Code of Practice 14 was the one that applied to public sector schemes specifically. What we have now is one consolidated code from TPR which gives us five individual streams and then within those five streams, 51 separate modules. We've used our actually to help us identify within those 51 modules which modules actually apply to the LGPS. And then we've gone and they've produced a very helpful toolkit which we've used. We've drilled down into 11 of the 14 chapters of the Code. And the results that you have in front of you reflect where we are against those 11 chapters. The three chapters that we've yet to cover, two of which are best practice only and the other is IT and cyber and we know we're a little bit behind the curve on our IT and cyber security which is a separate job that we're picking up. I think that's my review of what the report actually says and I'm happy to take any questions. Probably fair to say, Colette, that the Code of Practice has come out after all of the build up to it and it's extensive as you say, but most of the things they're talking about are the kinds of things that we'd have done anyway and were doing. So other than rather a sort of labour of administration to complete all this, this is basically just telling the regulator that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing. I don't want to diminish it but that's basically what it comes down to. Absolutely, yes. So next steps will be that we will complete the three chapters that we have yet to do and then we will review those areas of the 51 modules that we are partially compliant and look to work out a future plan to how we can become fully compliant against those areas and then report back against the whole of the code and then subsequently to that have annual and frequent reviews of the code just as a whole. Just to sort of expand the kind of framework of this thing, if when we've done that we send it all in to the regulator, do we get a sort of gold star or something that comes and says we've done it, you know, a tick or even that? It doesn't go to the regulator as such so we're not required to send it off to the regulator as such. What we would like to do though is to have an independent review of that and so we'll look with our actuary to do that so that we get that tick if you like. So we know that we've done it? Absolutely. But in a sense nobody else need know whether we've done it? Well they kind of do by the fact that we've looked at it, we're publishing a public document and we'll continue to do that going forward. OK, thank you. Neil, without wishing to issue spoilers for further parts of this paper, so part of the pensions review that was concluded yesterday and the consultation issued, one of the proposals is from the government, which is consistent with Good Governance review over a number of years ago, is that there will be biannual independent governance reviews of which this will form a huge part. So if you're talking about where will the compliance be, it will be in that and there is a clear direction from the government as well is that if funds are unable to show compliance there will be action taken, whether that be improvement plans or whether that be more drastic than that. So biannual you mean every two years? Yeah, biannual probably. But anyway not every six months. No. Thank you. William. Chair, just I think it's me that's confused probably. I think the regulators set up this process of doing your own review. Fine, nothing wrong with that. But if we're then giving it to an independent consultant to review our review, I presume they've got to do as much work to review our review as if they did it themselves in the first place. So I just wonder we've got two choices. We either do it and send it off without paying anybody else to second guess us or why don't we just pay them in the first place and save our officers time. I don't see the juxtaposition of the two easily. I'm going to turn to Colette on that one but I think the I'm guessing the independent reviewer are the people who advised us in the first place anyway how to do it. Is that right? In effect, yes. So it's the toolkit that we've used from our actuary and we would then go back to them and say, right, we think we're this. Could you just check to make sure we've got everything in the right box? But also it's the scheme manager's responsibility to assess ourselves against this code. So we have to do that self assessment ourselves. Presumably, Chair, their fee was flexed so that they're marking the homework and not actually doing the homework. Absolutely. Yes, but I think also in this particular case, I think Hybers Robinson have been commissioned by quite a number of funds. The work that they've done for us, they've done for other funds in the local government pension scheme because everybody needs somebody to do it to get it right and I think that's the way it's worked. Yeah, but they're saying, we think you should do it like this and yes you have, I agree. Whether the TPR thinks we've done it right is another matter, but they're not going to get to look at it apparently. Have I said anything wrong there? I'll leave the board to draw its own conclusions about the entire exercise. So we are asked to note the update on compliance with the TPR's General Code of Practice and actions identified. I think we've done that. Make any recommendations to the Pension Fund Committee if required. I don't think we can, Nick, make any recommendations. So is everybody happy that we move on from that item? Thank you, thank you Colette. Item 13, the actuarial update. This is really a brief item, I think just updating us on progress of the actuarial evaluation. I've got it down to you, Colette, to talk us through what's happening here. In a sense, we're just on time, aren't we? Exactly. Thank you, yes. It is a brief update just to give you an outline of the steps that we'll be going through and what we'll be covering each quarter going through from now through to when the new employer rates are brought into effect following the evaluation from April 2026. So the table in paragraph 4 sets out those steps and when various bits will happen. We're comfortable that page 170, item 4, the data cleansing work and all that stuff looking at Tom, really, within all the other things we've been talking about, is going to be fine. I think from the point of view of the evaluation, the data's going to be accurate enough. He's speaking us an actuary. Yes, we've got the team working on that as part of the plan we presented as well. I'm confident our data will be in good shape for that. Comments, thoughts on the actuarial evaluation process? Sorry, can I just add one other thing? There are three training sessions that Heimans are offering and you'll get some invites on those. I think the first one is online on the 25th of November and then there will be two more following, so we'd encourage all both committee and board members to attend those trainings sessions if you would like to. Thank you. I was going to ask about that. Will we get a specific link to join in at some point? Yes, yes. Okay. Thank you. So if you're interested, do all join in on that particular link. So that's item

1. We've noted the content of the report. We're now moving on to item 14 which is the internal audit progress report. Again, it's a brief report and I think it's more interesting in what hasn't been done rather than what has, but I'll pass over to Liam to talk us through that. Thank you, Chair. As you've said, a brief report for this quarter. A couple of key things to note in terms of, hopefully you've seen the report itself, but we've scheduled to do the banking controls for that in this quarter but after discussions with the service of Colette and various others, just due to the delays associated with obviously Mysore's implementation, there's just not enough progress there to be able to do that at this current point in time. We've agreed that we'll come back and review this in March, which is obviously the current aim for the board to have completed the work relating to Mysore in terms of getting it to a point where we can hopefully implement the actions that are due and we'll re-review that around March time with the team and provide a report then. So that will come at the end of the fourth quarter there. So that will be coming. But at the moment we can't provide an updated opinion on it because there's just not enough progress. I can't speak. You will be in a position to do that, do you think, Liam, for our next meeting? Probably not the next meeting. Probably the one after that, I'd imagine. Which would be in May. Yes. Obviously what that looks like I don't know at this point, but we've agreed with the team we'll have to provide a more formal update at that point and then go from there, really, in terms of what that looks like. And then you'll have noticed obviously it's not an audit of Sorry Pension Fund, but given the sort of conversations around Mysore, we've summarised our audit here of Sorry County Council's payroll, specifically the subsection of pensions enrolment. So we did this as an addendum to the payroll audit that we do for the wider County Council. And it shares the same opinion of minimal assurance, which hopefully as you'll note is our lowest level of assurance. We, as part of that, have agreed various number of actions with the County Council in order to address the issues that we identified, which you'll obviously see in the report there. And we're working closely with the stabilisation board as well to ensure these actions get implemented as needed. So hopefully that will support the work that Tom and the rest of his team are doing in terms of working with the board to get this resolved for the Pension Fund. And like I say, obviously the report details, in a bit more detail, some of the actual findings from that report there. In terms of action tracking, obviously we've got no high priority actions due outside of the banking control one that we've mentioned already. So that's good progress. And you'll see obviously the audit plan update. There's a few audits currently in progress. Actually one of them has just got to draft report stage, which is our business continuity arrangements audit. So that will be in the next report updated there with our opinion and the findings of that piece of work. The governance arrangements piece, given the update that Neil's also just provided in the recent changes there, we're now just supporting Neil and the rest of the team as needed in terms of what's happening with that rather than doing an audit at this point. When it's just been introduced, we'll wait a bit and maybe it'll be in next year's plan instead for that one. There's an audit just starting in Tom's team with Deft's administration. So that will be ongoing. It's just starting now. And that again hopefully we'll be able to report on that the next meeting, if not the one after that at the latest. And then in the next quarter we'll be doing the audit of pension fund investments and admission arrangements. So those will be coming to a future board as well. And just to note that the overseas pension and life certification work that Tom mentioned earlier, we're just finishing the audit of that now. So again we should have that for the next board too. Our summary of the arrangements around that and the appropriateness of those. Just as it's a new arrangement for the fund, we thought it was a good idea to have a look at that and make sure it's appropriate there too. So yeah, that's the summary for this coursework. Any questions? Happy to take them. Thank you Liam. As I say I think this report is interesting in what's about to happen rather than what has happened. We'll look forward to those when they come out. It seems to be right on top of the things that really matter. Well I said that it all really matters, but the things that are particularly important at the moment. So this is a report that will come either next quarter or the quarter after. It looks like they're going to be in May. Yes, a couple of them should be for the next board and then a couple more in the following month. Any thoughts on this particular report? Any comments for Liam? We'll look forward to them when they come. Thank you very much. So that's item 14. Item 15 is the external audit update. We had a separate paper issued a couple of days ago on that. Normally we don't have much to say about it, but there are some bits and pieces that have come out through this report. The audit progress update, some things that have been raised. I'm going to ask Neil and Colette to talk through these. Colette first. Thank you Chair. So the report originally was written without the attachment and at that point in time we had been working with EY to basically substantially finish our audit by the 6th of November. Unfortunately that hasn't been possible. And EY produced the progress report that you have in front of you that was sent to you a couple of days ago on the 8th of November and we've had meetings with them to follow this up. So the progress report that they have done gives updates on the six main areas of the audit that they had originally wanted to concentrate on through their audit plan back in June that was agreed by the Audit and Governance Committee back in June, July. This progress report is going to Audit and Governance Committee on the 20th of November alongside a progress update report on the Council's audit as well. All things being equal our audit has to be signed off, our accounts have to be signed off in conjunction with the county councils and the current date for that is to take it back to Audit and Governance at the meeting in January, middle of January 2025. The report is pretty much self explanatory recording the EY position on the six individual areas. The main focus for us is that EY have committed to getting the employer assurance letters out by the 29th of November. Is it worth observing I think that this is the first year that EY have done this audit? I think that one gets the impression that because it's the first year they've been particularly meticulous in what they're doing and they don't really blame them for that. But it is taking a bit of time. I don't know whether anyone wants to add anything to those comments. I think it's a fair observation Chair, I think it's taking time for the county council as well as the pension fund and some areas that the previous audits may have not considered to be material the new auditor is even though they're still not considered to be material, the new auditor is asking for much more information on that which is fine and the team are providing that. It's also in the background of the change of financial systems which we can't blame the auditors for. But it does mean that they are the evidence gathering has been more honest than it might normally have been. Thank you. Will you? Thank you Chair. Three points. Shall I make them all? They're short. And then the first one is normally when audits are not sent in in time there is some form of appropriate results and also usually permission needed. So the first question is are we okay or are we in the black belt? Can we answer that one first because I think we are okay. The second one is just clarification really. When it says in para two the volume of audit evidence still to be accepted by EY. Does that mean they've got it and they're challenging it or does it mean they haven't got it yet? Probably something in between actually. Yeah that's a very good question. So they have a portal and they put on there the items that they'd like to see and we have to upload the evidence to that and we have done that since the summer. Consistently what they haven't done is cleared those items down and accepted them. So verbal indications are that they have accepted those items. They just need to go in and push the button to say to change it from submitted to accepted. However yes it's exactly that. Until they've actually pushed that button we can't be certain that they have actually accepted that piece. The third one is paragraph seven where the DF says does present potential financial and value for money implications. Well audits are normally a fixed fee and the risk for the amount of work that needs to be done is the risk borne by the auditor. So I just wonder what are the financial implications of extending it to the new date? So they had to extend and provide. We've got to pay them more is what I'm asking. Yeah and we already know that that is the case because they did have to bring in some additional resources in October for a period of three weeks. So we are aware that there will be a small additional fee to the overall audit cost at the moment. And perhaps those additional resources will should we say speed up the acceptance of the evidence that's been supplied? That remains to be seen. Yes. What's the ratio of the additional fee to the size of the initial fee? I can't answer that off the top of my head I'm afraid. No, absolutely not. No, no it's not being doubled. But I don't have I can't recall exactly what they'd said. But we can provide that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you William. Any further thoughts on this? No, in which case we're asked to note again the content of the report and make recommendations to the committee if appropriate. I'm not sure what recommendations we can make to the committee so I'm taking that as read and we should look forward with interest to the resolution of the external audit. Which brings us to item 16 which are the background papers as ever. There's a load of stuff going on. Some of it I think we've covered during the course of the meeting. By the way is it the MHCLG or is it Duloc now? MHCLG. So it's gone from one to the other? There is no such thing as levelling up anymore. We've de-leveled up haven't we? Where did it change again? We went from blue to red. Oh right, okay. Fine, sorry I didn't pick that one out. Sorry, we've got these various updates. Is there anything particularly other than what you've already said that you wanted to highlight Neil? Well it would be remiss of me not to comment on the recent events over the last couple of days. So, I thought it was quite a unfortunate headline that you may have picked up on yesterday about eight mega funds. Perhaps slightly misleading but I suppose you don't get on the headlines on the today program without having something to talk about. So the Mansion House speech happened yesterday and a response to the pensions review and consultations followed after that. So I can give a brief summary of what's in the consultation and what the proposals are from government but I will provide a more detailed briefing in due course because there was quite a lot of detail in this. So I will just summarize the main points. Funds will need to delegate their implementation of their investment strategy to pools, so we're already doing that. Sorry. Requirement of funds to take principal investment advice from the pool. We need some more information on what that actually means. Whether that is it could mean a combination of what asset class is, it could mean something different. So we will, we need some more information on what that actually means. Requirement for pools to be an FCA regulated entity. Not all pools are. Our pool is. And a requirement to transfer legacy assets to the management of the pool. Something that, again, we're already doing. There was a requirement for funds to set out their approach to local investments. Which, again, it's something we've we're looking at from our investment review sessions that members of this board were attended a couple of weeks ago. And that will be delivered again by the pool so the due diligence investment expertise will be delivered through the pool. One could look at our UK opportunities fund which we made our first capital call on this week as already meeting that set of criteria. So local opportunities are considered and the due diligence is undertaken and then you have the decision on allocations through that. Let me move on to governance. There will be a requirement to appoint a senior officer. We did that about two years ago. To publish an administration strategy. We've done that about five years ago. There will be a proposal for a biannual independent governance review which I just mentioned. Training knowledge and understanding of committees will be brought, made consistent with that. That's already in existence with boards and officers as well will have further knowledge and understanding requirements. There will be the requirement to publish a conflict of interest policy and a clear guidance on roles and responsibilities between the fund and the admission authority. Which again is something that this board has seen a paper on. We've already anticipated that a little while ago. And that's the headlines. I'm happy to take any questions. As I've said there will be devil in the detail. I'm very sure of that. There's a quick update from last night. Any thoughts on that? Any comments? Nick? I think I picked up this morning. There was the Pensions Minister said the Mansion House speech didn't go far enough. Was that the correct interpretation? OK. Sorry, on social media this morning. The Pensions Minister said that? Yes, that's why I was surprised. Maybe she was saying that was just the headlines in the speech. There's more to come. And it was not well reported. But that's what I picked up at 8.15 this morning. That may be in the Mansion House speech. But I can assure you there's plenty of detail. There's three consultations each about 50 pages. So there's plenty of detail in that. Which is what we need to go through. There are one or two areas we really do need to, we will be feeding back. And I probably ought to mention the process for that. It's a nine-week consultation process. We will obviously be consulting with key stakeholders, both at senior officer level and committee and board level. Board of the Coast level? And working with our partners. Look, I mean, the model that the government are outlining has been optimal. It's very close to the model that we have built with Board of the Coast. And I don't think that's a surprise. We cut the work forward. Was there anything said in more detail about consolidation of pools? Reduce number of pools? So there is a well, it's implied, I suppose maybe one could describe it, although I wouldn't, as it could be consolidation through stealth. So there is a deadline of April 26 for pools to meet this FCA regulated model with internal management capability. Whether or not that's going to be possible for pools that don't currently have that capability. It's a lot of work for some of them. I'm sure there will be plenty of people prepared to help. So as far as this is concerned, we'll hear something from you. When I say we, I mean in the first instance probably Nick and me. But maybe there will be something coming certainly to the board at some point. The committee meeting is in December, isn't it? There will be paper. I will provide a briefing, as you said, probably late last afternoon to chairs and other senior colleagues in the organisation. I think I did say that I would provide an update to the whole board and the whole committee early part of next week. OK, thank you. So, as Flantus and Swan said, it all makes work for the work about to do, it seems. That's the way it is. I think that we note the contents. Any comments, sorry, any other comments on that particular paper, the background paper? Otherwise I'm going to move on. The date of the next meeting is the 21st of February. One thing I can promise everyone is it's going to be at least as interesting as this one. There seems to be a lot of stuff going on that's going to come back. With that, I think we come to the end. Are you having any other business? There's not on here any other business, but please do raise anything you'd like. I just wanted to make one point. Neil knows about it already. Following the away day, I dropped him a note on different things. One of them was the increasing interest in the pension world about what the Chancellor might say later on this week. I drew his attention, you've probably seen it anyway, to a report in the Times about a 45 billion pension fund, which I couldn't remember which one it was, but I think it's the one that swept up private pensions, small business private pensions, and that they had set up a responsible investment part of their funding strategy, which had demonstrably poorer returns than the rest of their investments. A point I raised with, and not just me, others in other places, is that pension fund actually in breach of its fiduciary duty? The point for raising it just now is twofold. One is when we've had a chance to digest what the Chancellor says, it may be worth a single issue meeting. This is touted as the biggest shake-up in pensions in a generation, so we have come bigger than that. The second one was really was just to make the point on behalf of the pensioners who are in here to represent not the employers, not anybody else, but the pensioners. The first test gateway that whatever she says goes through is whether any new requirements placed on us conflict with the fiduciary duty, because if they do, or we perceive them to, then I think we and our partners at Borders should take Council's opinion on which of these duties is the paramount duty. Now, I'm anticipating what may never come to pass, but I'm pretty certain it will come to pass. And I just wanted to make the point that can we look at this almost as a single issue because it's so important? And secondly, are we clear in ourselves that the acid test is the test against the fiduciary duty which generally rests upon pension funds? Sorry, I'm making a ploy for the future, in other words. Well, before you go, as far as I'm concerned, William, this is kind of constantly on the table. It is in our constant thinking as to how is this, what fresh news is the government going to bring that suggests it wants to tell us precisely how we should invest the assets for the betterment of the government rather than the betterment of our members, to put it like that. But that's constantly on the table. I'm not aware that anything has come out in this speech last night that particularly attacks that, although the kind of vague overhits and threat is there all the time, isn't it? Having said that, I'll let Neil comment. I'll try. I think the Scheme Advisory Board may have anticipated some of this already. They've received King's Council opinion specifically on the question regarding actually Palestine just recently come through and whether or not pension funds could be contravening international law. So that opinion is already available. That particular Casey, whose name for the moment eludes me, he is doing, has some further opinion on the nature of financial duty. So I think it would be that, but I anticipate a challenge to that. Casey's opinion is only based on the question you asked the Casey. So I think we would need to, I think it would be helpful to see that Casey opinion. If members want, nine weeks over Christmas isn't actually very long at all to answer to a consultation, but officers can look as to how we might best involve all stakeholders in having a, maybe we have to do something formal online. I don't know. We'd need to investigate how that is best achieved. We have a pension fund committee on the 13th of December, which is four weeks into the nine weeks. So we'll have to look at how we might best. The interesting thing is that the debate is stretching beyond the confines of the pensions industry. It was in the Times editorial again yesterday. It's in the Letters page today. So there's a groundswell of broader opinion now beginning to focus on this issue. I just feel we ought to be and I'm sure we will be sort of ready to apply what are the important considerations and fiduciary duty is the most important. I agree. Does anyone have any further comments otherwise, as there are no other items on the agenda, not even any other business. I will declare the meeting closed. Thank you all very much for your attendance.