Transcript

Transcript

Almost at two o'clock just a few seconds to go I think It is two o'clock Start the meeting Just a few words before we start Recognizing that the meeting is being held within the pre-election period for the general election It's recommended that the chair as myself do the following statement You'll be aware the general election is due to take place on the 4th of July 2024 we're therefore holding this meeting during a period of heightened sensitivity Although this council is largely operating business as usual. We will need to take particular care with our comments today. I Would therefore ask you all to ensure that any comments or questions Can't be perceived as seeking to influence public support for or against any candidate or political party This may mean that officers feel they can't answer all our questions publicly today Written responses will be provided By democratic services in a timely manner Apologies we've got a we haven't received apologies from Councillor Yousuf Dharmesh and Councillor Sarah Miller They've both got good reasons for not being here today Also Chris Norton who has extremely good reasons for not being here May be delayed Arriving at the meeting. I rather hope he doesn't arrive at the meeting But we have got to introduce Sarah Rafferty who's a trainee solicitor Who's come to watch this committee in action? So I'm sure we'll all be on best behavior today Disclosures of pecuniary and non pecuniary interests Minutes of the previous meeting confirm the minutes of the meetings held on the 4th of March 2024 and the 14th Unanimous The Next item is item two the engagement annual review Kate Sullivan and Lucy jiggling's to Introduce it up soon. One of you is going to be first So the annual review focused on engagement is like similar annual views that we bring to you through the year But we look at our achievements over the last 12 months Look at areas for development There's a particular focus on equality diversity inclusion in this one and look at our focus forward to 24 25 In terms of some of the kind of main headline figures for you and we've held two surveys in the last 12 months We had our main you'll say survey earlier in January this year and the well-being one in June last year Both of those we saw an increase in our response rate Which we were key we were really pleased about because we've been working in that area to try and get those up We saw slight improvements against our key business measures and all of these key business measures were scoring over 78% agreement Engagement KBM improved to 79% and up 3% from last year and our well-being KBM increased to 82% up 4% from last year And we perform well against all the local authority benchmarks with an average of 13 percentage points higher We delivered a range of bespoke interventions this year looking at those teams that are scored lower in the lowest 10% and trying to improve the The number of response rates and we undertook a community-based Teams project looking at how we engage better with those teams that aren't on their surface pro all day And we also did further engagement with our staff networks Our priorities for 24 25 is to continue to drive up our response rate take more Ensure that we're taking more action and doing more You said we did with our communication and our priority themes are to focus on leadership development progression communication and well-being And to continue looking at those community teams and driving those scores up We are proposing one main you'll say survey in the next 12 months But alongside that we want to hold some working and what your conversations where we doing it more in-depth Discussion with our people about what they like working in work share that will help with our strategic workforce planning recruitment retention, etc So they're the main headlines. Has anybody got any questions? First you know, I'd say that I was impressed with the benchmark Which is always useful to be able to compare Other kinds of a similar councils and that that that was a bit that impressed me particularly but in totally look It looks good Are there any questions I Think that's a really good question And I think you know, this is an area of work that we've been looking at for the last 12 months So we have increased that by 13 percentage points But we we know that's not where we want to stop and we want to carry on driving out and we're doing that through those conversations so through our network groups, but also when we do that the Working and working conversations that will be part of the topics that would explore about what we can do to increase that further With our aim. I think it would be to get it nearer to the 70% mark, which is where we'd like it to be What what are there any other new methods that you might be using in the future to achieve that And As Kate mentioned we'll be doing bespoke works We'll be doing bespoke interventions with the teams that had the least response rate So we found that that bespoke work really does add value and make a difference So we'll be going out again to those teams and trying to unpick and understand why they're not filling out the questionnaire getting that raw data About that to inform our plans Also, obviously looking at technology thinking about are there any other ways we can use technology to increase our response rate Perhaps we could use mobile phones, you know scanning tools and things like that to try and improve Thank you, I have asked before Why not make it compulsory for everybody to fill it in I was told that's really not the way we want to go We want people to just do it after their own free will and I've mentioned that people have sometimes Scared or frightened to in case of repercussions or whatever For those reasons they don't want to take part in some of these surveys So are these surveys anonymous or they are anonymous really even so? Some people still have that fear I don't want to put this because it may jeopardize my job or or whatever It's a difficult one to try and get everybody to join in willingly But there are those which just weren't for their own reasons But oh, you know excellent what you do Thanks, Jeff Yeah, and I think it's important we we don't sort of assume the reasons for people not responding I suspect it's quite Complicated I think a lot of it is down to workloads and the nature of the the jobs that people do We we do a lot of other engagement But I I would like to think that staff know without any question that the surveys are anonymous that we have no idea who's written What and I don't believe that is that's the primary driver of it Council Hammersley, I think I think it is more probably workload time And priorities, but we we take them incredibly seriously We do read every every single comment that the the individuals provide, but if you look at the distribution by directorates The response rate is quite a bit higher in my directorate Which I think reflects the fact that people are more plugged into this sort of thing in some of the other areas and the final thing I'll say is we've done the really really interesting piece of work about the Thousand plus staff who work directly in communities Whether in the libraries or in some of our community based teams and we're refreshing how we engage with those Those colleagues to try and try and increase the levels of engagement and prospects of success with them because they can't consume some of this stuff in the same way that Others others do so and the the the HR team is in a great job actually thinking about that actually talking to those groups As well, which we hope will increase the engagement. It may not increase the The annual survey necessarily but we were on it The higher response rate in your directorate is not because they haven't they've got so much extra time on their hands No, it's probably something but I'd like to think it's because I beg them every time I speak to the directorate to Respond and it's about my fifth go and we finally got above a thousand for the director Which has always been the Holy Grail, but I think it's high engagement is driving that I Know We don't know what we don't know But do you get any feeling for whether they're not responding are because they are Comfortable and therefore that they haven't got a point to raise They're just cruising, you know in their place of work. The alternative is the opposite They're not answering because they're not happy do you have a I Mean, I think with the increase in the response rate this year when we knew we've got an increase in response rate We were prepared that maybe the engagement rate might go down as a result because actually hearing for more more widespread amount of people But actually it was really pleasing to see the engagement rate had remained up. So actually it might you know, we we don't know for sure but the kind of indication is it's not that people aren't coming to fill it in now because they are more agreed or Not happy, you know, and our engagement rate is really really high, which is really good But we continue to have those conversations that you know We want to it's much more important to hear for more people than it is to get good results in this area So, you know, we will keep pushing to get that in that level of response rate up One more I think one is quite Interesting or possibly even concerning is diversity that the understanding of the reason for diversity questions has fallen Now either you've got a different population answering with a different profile to last year Which would be explainable what we really worrying is actually people Revise their opinion having understood it last year not understanding it this year. Do you have any? So I think it might be a question of timing of our campaign We do kind of an annual campaign with our EDI data where we put a story out about You know why we collect this information This year we're changing it to look at our social mobility Factors and we've been changing the questions that we ask and therefore we haven't sent out that annual campaign Before the the survey had taken place this year So I think it's possibly that it wasn't on people's minds as much as it had been in the past where Actually, the campaign had been at a kind of similar time to the survey going out But we again they say, you know It's a piece of what we want to ensure that we keep that conversation going and we continue to use that EDI data Can we the recommend leave the recommendation that we need to Decide on is that the committee notes and comments on the annual review of engagement activity? 2023 24 which we've done and Endorses future activity which I'm sure what hope we can do And we now move on to the pensions productivity Thank you chair and so this this paper is Is about a request that we've had from the government from the minister before the the election was called You may be aware that all councils were asked in April to produce a productivity plan for all of their operations and to submit that to government by the 19th of July And exactly a month pretty much to the day that we got the request of the council productivity plan very unexpectedly we had a secondary letter asking for a productivity plan for pensions and That was to be delivered to the same date Which didn't leave us all that much time to get this through the decision-making processes so what I'm gonna do today is just give you the background of some of our thinking and ask the committee to Authorize me in consulting consultation with the chair to finalize the productivity plan for pensions for submission to government So the the the letter that we had really is appended to the paper But it's really looking for two things. One of them was about pooling If you haven't or are not expecting to hit the government's expectation of 100% of your funds being pulled by March 25 why not and what what are you doing about it number one? And is there any merit in fewer bigger pools and then the second part is about consolidation of pension funds Which is quite a different quite a different matter a lot more variables and quite a lot more Risk there when you're when you're bringing pension funds together with the very different profiles and liabilities Assets and all the rest of it So we are working as we speak on a draft of the productivity plan in In section four we we've set out a little bit of a summary of what we what we think the the main themes may be And I'll just run through of those one of the strongest is actually I think in the response We intend to take quite a strong line that the pension funds only obligation really is the fiduciary duty to 58,000 members and 236 employers and So every decision we make about the future of the pension funds whether that's through benefits of scale consolidation of pools or funds or whatever else will only be driven by by that and I think that underpins almost all of the questions that we we have asked We won't have pulled all of our funds by the government's deadlines There are some very very good reasons for that which relate to our fiduciary duty and we will make that point we're very pro the pool in general, but pooling but only when it's going to work for us and Therefore and we won't go everything in by by March. We will emphasize that commitment to pooling but but subject to value for money and we will cover the fact that our pool is developed has developed a new strategy and is looking to extend its offer and To include some additional support for member fund investment strategies, which which could be a could be a positive thing And that the the pool itself has had some notable successes to date number of awards But it will be fair to say as well it is taking some time to see consistent performance in all asset classes from from the pool and we're keeping close close eye on that and We think that we've got very good evidence that the fund itself is well run. We've got a really good committee expertly chaired by Councillor kettle and a very mature independently chaired local pension board as well We've got very good knowledge of our members and employers. We think the customer service levels are really good And I think there's been a huge improvement in the last few years in in the kind of administrative side of about pension funds With great thanks to listen and her team And so while we think there's probably a stronger case for scale savings from fewer pools We're more skeptical about forced consolidation of pension funds which we think could have a number of potentially unintended consequences and perhaps the government would would be better advised to let that happen organically and So that's the sort of tenor of where where I think we're heading Wanted to test that and and see whether you're happy for it for first to develop the final Plan I set out in the recommendations The Letter is focusing very much at the best subcommittees And pensions because this is the overarching committee and there is an administrative element. It's not just investment In the Yes, it's in the paper that will do that yeah, yeah and I'm the chair of the local pension board as well we'll see it So although you have to have it signed off by the chair of this committee You will you will and you will have Discussions with the excellent chair of the pension subcommittee, but also the chair of the Pensions Board I would like to say that I totally agree that the idea of merging funds Slightly tells me the horror but The the dangers seen the risk seems to me to be much greater than any potential benefits They're going to be problems enough Difficult enough in merging pools, but merging funds as well I Mean the there are some very small funds and there will be cases where it makes makes sense But but I think forcing it is risky We happy to Recommendations Yeah, I think I just say And therefore if we start defining small funds it should be merged That might not necessarily be in this So, I think it's a cutting edge it's a it's a difficult one to go for clearly there are economies of scale have been delivered for some but actually One and one doesn't necessarily make two and it probably doesn't make three it might make one and a half I think that's something that we need to push back very clearly that There needs to be demonstrable benefit Before taking that step rather than just assumption bigger is better Sorry bill Thank you just just a thing that sort of The letter from Simon Hall then Pete says I do not wish to impose excessive burdens but I expect your letter to be no more than two pages in length and Returned by the 19th of July 2024 It's a bit like being back at school being told off by the teacher You you don't you have detention, but are you are you happy with his comment there? And of course we work to whatever the Minister asks us to produce In both productivity plan cases. There are a lot of questions to answer in a very short limit on the number of pages Which is actually and takes a bit longer than Doing something longer, but we're we're working to we're working to the brief and it's it's doable. It's fine They haven't specified the font size We I I'm personally happy with the recommendations particularly the The end of the number two where it Consulted having consulted with the chairs of the pension fund subcommittee and local pension board That's vital Are we all happy we agreed We move we now move on to the pension fund regulatory and policy update And I assume that Liz is here for that purpose. Thank you In the past quarter officers have reviewed six policy areas Five of those have had minor changes made to them those are set out in section 4.1 of the report Now the breaches policy communications data retention fraud and corruption and pension fund discretions The cyber security policy has also been reviewed in a bit more depth and that is based on the agenda for an exempt item section 5 of the report covers the latest regulatory changes Those changes are set out in the report and I won't cover all of them, but but just to pick out some headlines there's new guidance being received now for preparing the funds annual reports and We've been asked to use best endeavors to apply those to the 20 23 24 annual report. So we'll be we'll be doing that this year the economic activity of public bodies overseas matters bill Which would have made provision to prevent public bodies from being influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign states when? taking economic decisions that Received its second reading in the House of Lords and work was a committee stage prior to the general election being called But it didn't make it to the end of the process so that won't now happen If it's resurrected By the next government then I believe it has to start at the beginning of the process again So that's changed since the report was written Lifetime allowance was abolished and that came into force on the 6th of April Section 5.6 gives an update on progress with implementing the McLeod age discrimination remedy for fire pension scheme members And actually since that report was written there have been some more changes To that as well We shall perhaps hand over to Lisa to explain if that's okay Yep, so the fire pension scheme age discrimination where when we wrote this report it was for scheme managers to choose one of three different options for their fund going forwards and The need for that was based around The interest that is being included in the calculations for any arrears payments for pension and lump sum is being paid at 8% and HMRC had said that that wasn't that was higher than the commercial rate that they would be Usually happy with it being an authorized payment So since the since the reports being written HMRC have now confirmed that they're happy with 8% Being an authorized interest rate within the calculation however There is now further Further queries around the fact that If a payment is authorized then the interest on that payment is authorized if a payment is Unauthorized which would then Hold a further tax bill at the moment. There is no mechanism within any Regulations for any offsetting about what was already being paid. So if if an individual had paid 4,000 pounds worth of Tax on the calculation the age discrimination meant that calculation got reviewed and now he owes five thousand pounds in tax There is no ability to offset that. He's already paid that four thousand that has resulted in Cases for the age discrimination remedy being put into green amber and red cases Green cases obviously being processed in amber and red. We're waiting for further guidance from HMRC An LGA on what will happen with those Sorry paragraph 5.6 talked about the scheme manager having Approved an option for the problem that we thought we had that problem has now gone away But we have an additional issue that we will now need to work through Section 5.7 is around fire pension scheme temporary promotions What your payroll services had identified around a hundred members of the fire pension scheme? Where contributions have been taken in error on pay for temporary promotions? and that was the rules changed when the 2015 scheme came into force and That's when we continue to take contributions on temporary promotion pay When that was no longer applicable so refunds for those are being issued to individuals and The records that are held by West Yorkshire pension fund to administer the scheme on our behalf They're all being checked to make sure that the data is correct going forwards Looked at the committee. This is one of these reports where we just we note and comment comes that was Well, the only comment is it's still work in progress until these number crunches been finalized by HMRC, which Will take however long HMRC take Maybe forever We will see Fund are Communicating very closely with members for any delays that are happening. There is quite a tight timescale of Different kinds of cases that have to be Processed by certain deadlines within the next nine months and we are getting to the point where deadlines are close But so we're liaising with members to ensure that communication is up-to-date. So they know what what to expect and when this Yeah, it's perhaps just worth saying that Watcher has been very much on the front foot with McLeod and has been in advance of the majority of other funds, so Although we keep coming up against these little blockages to complete the cloud process I'm not at all surprised is that we are in the lead majority of councils on this one. What's so well done? Two points there in in the report and one is on 4.1 Where the we say where the scheme employer is defunct If cease trading or that they have been Wound up or some defunct isn't an unusual word to use in terms of employers They have been What's happened to them? Most of the time it is that they have no contributing active members left in the in the fund anymore. It can be Contracts for a specific Academy and that contracts no longer Is it existence It's just like thank you for that clarification. The second point is in 5.3 You This is not something we considered earlier on in the previous meeting about investment in new children's homes So It'd be quite interesting to see how it's come to staff and pensions rather than the Investment Committee But Where's this really come from and what work is being done within the pensions team in total About this. Is anybody looking at is anybody preparing? Possible ventures. I mean are they included in an offering from border to coast or something like that? I'm not aware that it's got anywhere close to being that far developed at the moment. It was it was a comment in in the spring budget But I don't think it's progressed any further than that So the information in these regulatory updates comes from the LGA and they they give us a snapshot of Is it something that the Pension Fund Committee should actually just have on the back burner as a Proposal bill When I read it I saw it as a case of a government Wanting to use the LGPS to fund projects it was interested in putting forward and I could see and I to me Felt as though this is something that whatever government we have whatever color that government is This could be something that we need to be more aware is likely to happen in the future Could be children's homes, it could be green investment it could be But we would need to as the investments ultimately would in due course need to bear that in mind Are we happy to You We move on to the pensions administration activity and performance update we start with an update on our member self-service portal, we continue to monitor the take-up and usage of the portal and we see Take-up continue to steadily but slowly grow We've got our annual benefit statements due to be published by the 31st of August this year and we aim to use that As a way to increase sign-up numbers And we plan to use our employer network to achieve that The LGA the local government association have recently collected data from all funds on Portal usage and sign up and they are just about to publish a guide And publish that data so funds can view and see where they are against other funds and and possibly use that guide as a best practice to increase Numbers that are using our self-service portal and we believe that the introduction of the national pension dashboard Which we'll update on shortly will have a positive impact on our own portal sign up numbers Next we look at our key performance indicators The data shown here covers the whole of the 2023-2024 your year From 1st of April 2024. It's worth noting that the KPIs have been reviewed in line with new guidance from the scheme advisory board and For next year, we're increasing our measures from 14 Measures to 16 with two new measures around estimates issued and quotes for retirements You can see from our data some of our performance this last year has been affected Due to factor delays caused by changes in discount rates McLeod implementation No calculations are on hold at the moment. So we are seeing full results Going forwards at the moment Next we're looking at our pensioner payroll key performance indicators Warwickshire County Council payroll run the payroll for the Warwickshire pension fund We are monitoring their performance on a quarterly basis We have regular meetings between ourselves and payroll to discuss and resolve issues and we have no concerns over over performance April saw all of our pensions in payment being increased due to the annual cost of living rise This was six point seven percent from the 8th of April and the systems have been fully updated 31st of May saw the deadline for p60s to be sent and these were issued to all members well in advance the deadline via paper or email depending on which is most appropriate for them Moving on to the workloads of the team the management team have continued to monitor the cases that are coming into the scheme to identify trends in numbers and types of Request data received through the year we can see through from the report the positive impact that the member self-service Portal and the iConnect system is having on our case numbers Part of the scheme advisory board new annual report guidance is around workloads that the funds should be monitoring And the new guidance is asking us to collect data on phone calls emails office visits employer Engagements and the funder working on processes to collect these new data requirements on workloads going forward so we can Have more data on what the fund are doing Next we're looking at breaches the table shows the results up to the February data, which has a deadline of 19th of March You will see a breach on there in relation to an issue with employer Contributions for six employers where their payroll system was not taking employer contributions on any back pay received Crucially there the employee contributions were correct. So no money was owed by individual members and The fund has worked with the payroll team to update the data and collect contributions from the employer side that we are owed We await a response from the pensions regulator on any actions that they think we need to take as well as what we've already done For IDRPs, we have two cases still at stage one Cloud project update we are drawing to a close on this project all work going forwards is being Calculated in line with new regulations and the McLeod project team have returned to their usual team positions Work has moved to a more BAU Process within the local government pension scheme side of things We expect our work to be completed within the next three months with 75% of all of our records in scope for McLeod Already having been fully calculated for any underpin checking And this is being done in line with LGA guidance on priority cases and as Liz said the team are in advance of many other funds Nationally with our work on this project Our last update here is about pensions dashboards. So this is a new project that the the funder working up towards Our business case for the project is now being approved Local government pension scheme have a staging date of 31st of October But we're still waiting information on when the dashboard will be available for public use The fund have got a project plan set up We've got support from a project manager and our main focus for this next year is being about the quality of our data The purchase and testing of our integrated service pathway and a tracing exercise for all of our gone away members where we don't hold address data That's it. Any questions Again we need to comment and note You Keep KPI one letter detailing transfer and quote 58% Is that a transient hiccup or was it just when the cutoff came through date wise or is there an issue that So the transfer calculation was one which had the longest hold on in Because of the change in discount rate So when the discount rate was updated we had one of the longest holds on that form of case While we couldn't process it because we were without factors However, also mentioning that the that is one of the KPIs which has had the main changes Going forward. So I think the scheme advisory board thought that they were measuring the wrong part of the calculation there going forwards We're measuring once the transfer is being fully completed. How long are we taking to? to inform the members that it's fully completed because You are at the mercy of another fund During the process, you know, it's something that is is our fund and someone else's fund as well But yeah, the main thing that affected that was the discount rate and there was a hold We couldn't process cases for a number of months last summer I look forward to coming to one of these meetings and the words McLeod Not being on the agenda But we're all happy So that's proposed by Councillor Hammersley, seconded by Councillor We'll now move on to item 6 and again Lisa will take us through the review of the minutes of the local fire pension So the fire local pension board last met on the 12th of February and we're reviewing the minutes The first point to note is around the increase to the employer contribution rate following the latest fire scheme valuation This is a significant increase for the employer contributions with the driver for the increase being around the Matthews project and the age discrimination remedy and the costs associated with those two projects Systems have been updated to collect the new contribution rate and funding is in place for this year The next point is looking at the age discrimination for fire pension schemes Work continues on fire records to implement the remedy as we've discussed It's a very complicated area and you will have heard the latest position during the governance report And then lastly looking at the Matthews project for the second modified retained exercise The fund have done further work to identify members that may be in scope and have now increased the numbers of in scope from 118 to 146 And the fund are liaising with tracing companies at the moment to help trace members that we hold out of date address data for This project is around allowing members to buy pension service prior to July 2000 So unfortunately as you can appreciate data can be well out of date for the members that we hold We're working closely with the local government association on this project They're currently working on a Matthews guidance document for funds to use as they've identified 37 different kinds of member calculations that we could possibly have to do for this But unfortunately Matthews is affected by the same queries around tax and interest because the McLeod project is so there has been some hold up on our ability to process this as the project would involve paying interest and arrears on calculations The fund are working closely with West Yorkshire Pension Fund and Fire Finance on next steps for the project And that's it on the fire Any questions? Any comments? Councillor Hammersdale Just one thing then It does say the county council will receive an additional one off grant from the government to mitigate the additional costs Is this or will it be sufficient to cover the cost or I assume that's a number that you haven't crunched yet to find out what it will be But rather than give you an amount which is not enough I assume there will be a figure that you need So the way that it works here is in terms of funding the firefighters pension scheme we give the government estimates of what we think our costs are going to be for the year and then we send them actuals at the end of the year so they will give us money based on our estimates and then there's an adjustment at the end of the year when we submit the actual information And we get as much as we need, yes it's fully funded Any other speakers? In that case I will suggest that we pass the recommendation proposed by Councillor Gettle, seconded by Councillor Hammersdale Move on to the employers joining and leaving the pension fund Hi so yeah our usual report detailing employers leaving and joining the pension fund it's an area of constant change for the pension fund who our employers are And the fund holds regular meetings with our legal colleagues and our actuaries to ensure our internal controls around our employers are high It's been a quiet quarter for the fund with no new academies and no exiting employers, two new contractors for admission this quarter, ABM Industries at Bishop's Tatchbrook C of E primary school from the 1st of February and Spotless Midlands Limited for Birmingham Diocese multi-academy trust on the 1st of February 24 as well Anybody have any comments to make or I propose that we from the chair I'm happy to propose that we delegate authorities, executive director and resources to approve the applications and facilitate the employers Are we happy with that and are we able to get a seconder? Seconded by Councillor Hammersdale We now move on to agenda item 8 It is to move that the following resolution be passed to be seconded and voted upon That members of the public be excluded from the meeting for the items mentioned below on the grounds of their presence would involve the disclosure of executive information as defined in paragraph 3 of schedule 12a part 1 of the local government act 1972 any members of the press or public should be asked to leave the committee room at this stage and the webcast will therefore also be halted I'm sure there are loads of people watching but unfortunately I need to turn them off now [BLANK_AUDIO]