Issue - meetings

12.15

This report updates the Committee on the key administration issues including service performance measurement, the debt recovery process and any write offs agreed in the last quarter. 

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to

i)        Agree to a further extension of the reduction is SLA target, to be reviewed at the December meeting;

ii)       Agree to the proposed changes to communication policy;

iii)      Note the amounts written off by the Pension Services Manager; and

iv)      Decide whether the fund should undertake an annual benchmarking exercise.

Recommendations i) to iii) were agreed.

The Committee agreed not to undertake an annual benchmarking exercise.

The Committee considered the report updating the key administration issues including service performance measurement, the debt recovery process and any write offs agreed in the last quarter.

Sean Collins noted that the report included a request to extend the Service Level Agreement targets as the team was struggling to meet them.  The team was confident that this would be the last extension they would need.  He also updated the committee on the annual benefit statements which had been a difficulty in the past.  100% of the deferred benefits and 99.5% of the active benefits statements went out by the 31 August deadline.

In response to Members’ questions about late data from scheme employers, Sean Collins agreed that the escalation procedure was not as robust as it should be and this was being addressed.

The Chair asked for it to be noted that the Committee would like to see a more robust escalation procedure for recalcitrant employers.

On Recommendation d), Sean Collins reported that Audit had asked if the annual benchmarking work should be restarted.  The officers’ concern was that it was of little use given the difficulties in comparing performance between funds.  There were other informal ways in which information was gathered.

Councillor Bulmer noted that there was a lot of useful information in the reports from Brunel.

The Chair proposed that an annual benchmarking exercise not be undertaken.  This was seconded by Councillor Bulmer and agreed by the Committee.

RESOLVED to

a)               Agree to a further extension of the reduction in SLA target, to be reviewed at the December meeting;

b)              Agree to the proposed changes to communication policy;

c)               Note the amounts written off by the Pension Services Manager; and

d)              Agree not to undertake an annual benchmarking exercise.