BCH Police Pension Board minutes 15 June 2020

Attendees

• James Hurley (JH) - Chair - NPCC Lead Pensions, Hertfordshire
• Anthony Laud (AL) - NARPO BCH representative, Cambridgeshire
• Stuart Goodwin (SG) – Senior Accountant, Bedfordshire
• Sergeant Alan Wollaston (AW) - Police Federation BCH representative, Hertfordshire
• Jackie Ingle (JI) - Deputy Chair - Head of Exchequer Services, Cambridgeshire
• Karen Morgan (KM) - Hertfordshire (but not a member)
• Graeme Hall (GH) - XPS outsourced BCH pension administrators
• Colin Connolly (CC) - Head of Corporate Communications, Hertfordshire
• Superintendent Jon Hutchinson (JHut) - substitute Superintendents Association BCH representative, Cambridgeshire
• Debbie McGregor (DM) - Minutes - ESO, Herts Executive Support
• T/ACC Dan Vajzovic (DV) - CPOSA and Superintendents Association BCH representative, Cambridgeshire
• Afzal Chowdhury (AC) - Head of Legal Services, Hertfordshire
• Kevin Courtney (KC) - NPCC Pensions Advisor

Apologies

• T/ACC Dan Vajzovic (DV) - CPOSA and Superintendents Association BCH representative, Cambridgeshire
• Afzal Chowdhury (AC) - Head of Legal Services, Hertfordshire
• Kevin Courtney (KC) - NPCC Pensions Advisor

1.Apologies

JH welcomed attendees to the meeting and apologies were noted as above.

2. Approval of minutes and actions – 10 February 2020

Minutes were approved as a true and accurate record of the meeting. Action tracker was updated.  

3. Conflict of interest 

No one declared a conflict of interest. 

4. TPR – Member public services toolkit/TPR website

JH mentioned that one of the rules of this Board was that we keep up to date with pension issues.  One of the ways to do this is to review the TPR website. This is mandatory and we should be doing this every year. Everyone agreed to review this annually via the website

5. Terms of Reference (ToR)

JH reported that the ToR for this Board was last looked at in 2015 and now needed to be reviewed.  

The below elements were raised:

• What we need to undertake is accurately reflected in the Terms of Reference.

• Reviewing risk registers, reviewing service levels, looking at how there is communication to scheme members etc. and other areas that we are looking to progress. That ToR was written from the National Guidance.  JH cannot see any significant areas that we need to change.

• Section 4.2 of the ToR:  We would be operating whereby we alternate between the staff side, employer side and the officer side of chairing the Board. This will be covered on the next item of the Agenda.

• Final area JH identified to be looked at was the annex on any payments we make to independent members.  This has not been updated since 2015. These rates will need to be reviewed and uprated by 10% as this might not be reviewed again for another five years. The proposal was agreed by the SG and Board. 

• CC asked that the membership list of the Board that is available on the intranet be reviewed.  CC asked that he be sent this updated list so he can update the intranet. 

Action: JH will update the ToR to show 10% increase in the payments we make to independent members. 

Action: CC asked that JH look at the membership list of the Board and update and CC will then update the intranet.

6. Chair/Deputy Chair appointment

JH asked the views of AW and JHut to see if they are in agreement to share the chairing of the meeting in the future. Both agreed to take on the chairing of the Board. JHut also mentioned that Dan Vajzovic has given notice that this is his last calendar year on the Pensions Board so it could be shared with his next proposer and this will be for the Chief Officer’s to discuss. The paperwork and the follow up side of chairing the meeting will still be carried out by Executive Office. From September 2020 the below was agreed:

•  AW said he was prepared to Chair the September 2020 meeting in the interim. 

• Deputy Chair to be shared between JI, JH and SG. This will be taken offline to nominate for September meeting.  

Action: JH reported that AW will Chair the next meeting with Secretariat support. Deputy Chair (Employer side) to be agreed between employer reps.   

7. Risk register

JI talked through the risk register and the changes which have been updated on the report.

 

• JI asked GH of XPS about an outstanding risk regarding the move from Kier to XPS and its impact. GH confirmed that all contact is ow changed to corporate email account and new phone numbers. JI said this is item would now be closed.
• JI said XPS contract is due to expire this year. This has now been added as a new risk.
• McCloud is still a red risk and will be ongoing for quite a while. 
• JH talked about auto-enrolment and asked if this should now move from green to amber. This is a critical period now even though works are progressing. JI agreed to move to amber for now. 

Action: JI will now mark auto-enrolment as an amber as this is a critical time. 

8. Auto re-enrolment

JI updated the Group the original enrolment date of 1^st May 2020 was moved to 1^st July 2020 due to COVID to give us more flexibility. 

There have been conversations about medicals for re-enrolment. Individuals who remain in the scheme will still have to have a medical. But it has been agreed that there will not be a charge for this medical. 

JI reported that they have identified all the people that need to be re-enrolled and a template letter is ready to send out next week. They will then be re-enrolled on the 1^st July 2020.  

CC said that the BCH auto enrolment comms has been loaded on to all three Forces intranet on the pension pages.     

AW said he has seen enquiries that have come in lately with regard to new recruits joining and also those that have come out of the scheme and want to go back in within the five years. The issues are around the ill health part of the pension which you need a medical for.  They are not being allowed into the scheme until the medical has been carried out which is causing delay and are financially missing out. My understanding is that they can join the pension but the ill health part is why we are having the medical. The question is can they not just start the pension and a decision be made later on the ill health once they have joined? KM she was not aware of the opt ins being told this so she will have to look into this. KM has been told that the arrangements are at the moment that they will all go into the scheme and medicals will be caught up with. KM said this maybe a miscommunication.  AW said the two people that have issues are Ross and Carlie Little. KM asked JI if these cases would be auto enrolled again in two week’s time. JI said yes they would fall into this auto-enrolment. 

KM and JI said that this needs to be addressed as this may not be the case.   

JH said we have to minimise any barriers that people have with their pension membership.  JH has asked that the process be changed so that people are able to join the re-enrolment scheme and if that means administratively the most sensible way of doing that is to put them in the full scheme with a rider that if they have not through their own actions complied with the medical elements that they would be taken into the scheme ill health and that would be a better way of working. 

KM also noted that If someone does not pass the medical there is also an appeal process. 

Action: KM to look at the process and then to clarify the process so that everyone knows what they are signing up to and report back to the board.  

AW said there was a case where an officer resigned, then came back to the force within five years and has been told that they will not reopen his pension and that it will remain deferred.   My understanding is that we are waiting for the Home Office to come back to us with some clarification around this that they can actually reopen the pension rather than deferring it. JI said this is quite complicated because of the protection and things like that. Maybe XPS may have some more information on this. 

JH asked JI if this was a live case being looked at with XPS. XPS said they were still waiting on a response from the Home Office.

Action: JI to chase XPS to see if they have received any feedback on this individual case from the Home Office. Applicant is Surname Freeman.  JI to update AW on any outcome. 

9. McCloud pension remedy:

Government position

JH talked through the important commitment from Government

Compensation claims – Leigh Day claimants non-pecuniary claims 19 June deadline, Staff Association notice to commence legal action

AW said the comms came out directly from Leatherhead, so no one knew when the comms would be coming out. GH said he has received a few enquiries and has asked members to use the self service portal. JI said we have had a few queries come in and wanted Federation to send out Comms. KM said if people need extra information they should be obtaining this themselves.

BCH remedy implementation

JH said that we have made some good progress with JI and XPS and the legal side. We are understanding who the claimants are.

8. XPS update

 Performance report

• Impact of COVID

• Review of injury awards (Evans and Ashcroft)

• Data breach – Improvement to process

GH updated the group:

• General movement in membership that is day to day with 36 schemes reducing down breaches and complaints – none this quarter

• Cyber controls – we are covered by Cyber Essentials - getting Cyber Essentials plus by the end of September

• We have just gone through the ISO 9001 audit for this year carried out remotely

• Phone numbers are due to change. This has been advertised, it is on the website and clients have received a list of the phone numbers and contacts. (A copy is available to go out with the minutes)

• XPS did some testing the week before the lockdown happened due to Covid.  The first week we got the majority of the staff working from home. I am currently in the office today. We have a small team. Working from home is working quite well.  SLA is being reviewed on a daily basis so nothing is missed. Phone calls have been a bit of an issue. There have been no complaints though.  We are monitoring all these factors. 

• Client reports – the SLA’s are remaining quite high

• JH wanted to pick up on one element. The question relates to 2019, Hertfordshire transferees in the performance was 50% and 71% achieving this within a certain number of days and the target is 90%. How does it work when a team is behind as this is quite impactive on an individual waiting for their pensions. GH said there is a system that all the work comes into a code system. Code red is at the top of the list.  That would then be a priority. Sometimes we are waiting for information to come back through. That would go back on the shelf. We would report that as a fail. Those would be treated as a priority and would be looked at the next day. We have a Team manager that will look at all the work and then allocate the work to the relevant person who will work best with that case. Some cases are quick and go straight through and other cases someone may work on one case all day and get it right. 

• GH asked if there were any questions. SG asked if the outcome of the Evans and Ashcroft case be used as a general rule for overpayments. JH says he has found the majority of cases were of underpayments. GH said that of 125 cases reviewed there were 29 cases that needed amending and of all of them they were all underpayments. JH asked KM what the view was of overpayments. KM said that this may need to be looked at as normal overpayments are dealt with on an individual level. JH said this is going to be small numbers of overpayments. A principle needs to be looked at. TL commented that it may be too early days to make decision until we know more facts.  

Action: JI and KM to collect information and date and talk about an approach of overpayment and a process. Look at the individual and see if they knew that they were being overpaid. Six years back date is the limit for overpaid salaries.   Depending on the value of the overpayment this may need to go to CFO’s. XPS said time frame will be end of summer for information to be available.

11. SAB newsletter

JH information sharing item.

12. Annual report

JH is anything needed to be changed or added to this report.  Nothing was added or changed so this report will now be sent to the CFO’s. 

13. Review of breaches and complaints

No breaches or complaints were raised. 

14. Any other business

No one raised any other business.

Date of next meeting: Monday 14 September 2020

Pension administration and payroll contract

JH updated the Board on the XPS contract, following the written update in June. This contract was considered by CFO in April and it was decided to extend the contract with XPS. The paper sets out the rationale for this. All three CFO’s have indicated that they want to extend the contract for a further two years taking us to 2022.  Board members were supportive.