Agenda item

This report presents details of potential new admission to the pension fund. The report also gives a breakdown of the amount of visits made to the Haringey pension fund website.   

This report introduced by the Pensions Manager, Janet Richards, presented details of a potential new admission to the pension fund and gave a breakdown of the amount of visits made to the Haringey pension fund website.

The Committee was informed that The Grove School would be a new school, with effect from 1 September 2018. It was noted that 23 members of the support staff who are currently members of the Local Government Pension Scheme would transfer to The Grove School and remain in the Local Government Pension Scheme. The Committee was also informed about the performance of the Haringey pension website in the months of June 2018 and July 2018, with it being noted that the average amount of users per month to the pension website was 336, viewing on average 1309 pages.

Annual Benefit Statement

Although this was not on the Agenda, the Committee were informed by the Pensions Manager that the Annual Benefit Statements, which are an annual estimate of pension benefits earned by individuals, should have been sent out before 31^st August 2018 (as per the relevant legislation), however, this was not done. 

It was explained that Haringey Council used a third party to send out the Annual Benefit Statements. Whilst the Council had sent these to the third party on 24^th August 2018 for printing, there appeared to have been an administration level error that caused there to be a delay before the printed statements were then sent to the postal room for posting. Consequently, the statements were not sent out in time. The Council’s Pensions Team became aware of the error and queried this with the third party. Upon discovery of this delay, and having investigated the error, the Pensions Team sought advice from the Pensions Regulator as to whether the issue amounted to a breach. The advice from the Pensions Regulator was that the relevant Pensions Committee should be consulted with the facts of the incident and it was for them to decide whether the incident amounted to a material breach or not. It was noted that a finding of a material breach could, depending on its severity, result in the Council being fined.

Following discussion, there were conflicting views amongst members of the Committee. It was mindful that:

• This error was outside the control of the Council, and that there appeared to have been no negative impact on the recipients of the statements;

• The Council had been proactive in investigating the issue, which had only recently occurred; and
• The Committee were reassured that the incident would not happen again and that the Council were moving towards sending out the statements online in the future, which it was believed would mean the statements would not then have to be posted.

However, it was not content that:

• This information had been presented without being included in any report, which did not give members of the public an opportunity to review the issue; and
• No formal recommendation had been prepared for the Committee to consider. 

Having heard the full details of the incident, the Committee felt that they were not in a position to decide whether to report the incident as a material breach and decided that it would be appropriate for the Council’s lawyers to be consulted on the issue first. Their advice should then be presented to the Committee at a future meeting for consideration. The Committee suggested that the Council should follow the recommendation of its lawyers, and if they advised the Pensions Team to report the incident as a breach, to do so before the next Pensions Committee and Board meeting.

Resolved

1. To approve the admission of The Grove School as a new employer to the Pension Fund.

2. To note that this report gives a breakdown of the amount of visits made to the Haringey pension fund website.