Amendments to the LGPS Leaver Form

Further to last month’s edition, in addition to the tick boxes within the Hours at Date of Leaving and the Actual Pensionable Pay (CARE) Sections, we have included a further tick box for you to confirm if the Final Salary Pensionable Pay is required. You will need to check the Membership Details record for that member to see what is recorded:

• If the member doesn’t have membership prior to 1st April 2014, you do not need to provide the last 365 days final salary pensionable pay for that member, just tick the box.

There may be some cases that an amalgamation of records is done at a later date and we will need to contact you for the final pay figures to process any subsequent benefit calculations so you need to keep this information on your records or have access to historical data.

• If it shows membership before 1^st April 2014, you will need to provide the last 365 days final salary pensionable pay

We ask that you check the members record, complete all sections, tick boxes and questions asked on the form for all leavers. If any information is missing or the tick boxes have not been completed, the leaver form will be rejected and a work activity will be created for you to action - the only exception is if the member opted out within 3 months and contributions have been refunded through payroll.

Please see our website for help with completion of the form and what you need to check on the members record.

In some cases, we are still receiving older versions of the leaver form to our secure mailbox. Employer Self Service (ESS) must be used for all leavers as the latest version of the form will be available - any old versions of the leaver form will be returned to you with a request to use ESS. Submission via ESS enables our team to identify every leaver uploaded to the portal and follows a process so that leaver forms are not missed and dealt with accordingly.

Please can we remind you that leaver forms should be submitted in a timely manner and more details on the expected timescales for submission of the leavers form, can be found within the Pension Administration Strategy pages on our website: Devon Pension Fund Administration Strategy  and Somerset Pension Fund Administration Strategy

Consultation on statutory guidance on Special Severance Payments

On the 2nd July a consultation on MHCLG’s draft statutory guidance on Special Severance Payments began.

MHCLG welcomes responses from all interested parties by 13th August 2021. They are particularly keen to receive responses from the bodies listed in the Annex to the covering letter of the consultation. This list includes public sector scheme employers.

The consultation document, covering letter and LGA’s initial comments are all available to view on the scheme consultations page of www.lgpsregs.org

Making a Devon Pension Fund payment

When you make a payment to the Devon Pension fund could you please ensure the entity has the correct bank account details (20-30-54 60079626), if you need an entity set up form completed for your system with these bank details then please submit the form to michelle.jackson@devon.gov.uk for completion.

Employer Self Services (ESS) Work Activities

Following the item in January’s edition, unfortunately there are still a few of you who are not completing the work activities after a leaver form has been rejected. Please make sure that you complete the work activity once you have uploaded a revised leaver form to the members record. Go back into the relevant work activity, select New Entry, confirm a new form has been uploaded and press Save – this will update the work activity to ‘In Progress’. Then re-select the work activity and press ‘Save’ again to complete it.  Please see the guidance on our website for help with the process.

LGA 2021 versions of the HR and Payroll guides

The LGA have recently published 2021 versions of the HR and Payroll guides (version 4.2). You can find the guides on the Administrator guides and documents and Employer guides and documents pages of www.lgpsregs.org. They have published Word versions of the guides that include tracked changes so that you can see the minor amendments that we have made.  

Employer Pensions Discretions Policy

A reminder that you should review your pensions discretions policy at least annually to make sure it still meets the LGPS regulations and of course, fits in with your own policies and budget. Please review your current discretions policy against the current guidance on our website and send a copy of your current or updated discretion policies to the Employer & Communications team.

Our two video guides to the Local Government Pension Scheme have recently been updated

Our two guides to the Local Government Pension Scheme have recently been updated. If you use the links in any of your own media you will need to update these.

Please go to the following page on the Peninsula Pensions website to update these.

Your pension scheme - Peninsula Pensions

We now have two video guides available to help you through the process of producing you own estimates, through our Employer Self-Service (ESS) portal.  Please choose the video relating to the pension fund you are part of.

Employer Self-Service - Peninsula Pensions           

Keep us updated

Please remember to keep us updated with any changes in staff responsible for completing our forms (authorised signatories). This can be done by completing our online form.

You can also use this form to notify us of your IDRP Stage 1 Appeals Officer, your Payroll Provider, your contact for Interfaces and to sign up to our employer newsletter Pensions Line

Change of Payroll Provider & Provision of Data

It is important that you contact the Employer & Communications Team if you are changing your payroll provider. We can then work with you to ensure you put processes in place to retain access to historical payroll information and continue to fulfil your responsibilities as a Scheme employer.

Payment of Pension Fund Contributions

Please remember to inform us and the relevant Finance team each time you have paid your pension scheme contributions, by filling in the Monthly Contributions Form. If we receive the returns right away with the payments and they are correct, it makes the process so much easier. Please ensure that you build this form into your procedures.

If you are a Somerset Pension Fund employer, please contact the Corporate Finance Team for a copy of the Monthly Contribution Return: Corporatefinancepens@somerset.gov.uk

If you are a Devon Pension Fund Employer, you will need to use the online EAS5 form. 

Employer representatives for Somerset Fund's Pension Board

The Somerset Fund is looking for employer representatives to sit on the Fund’s Pension Board.  An e-mail was sent to employers on 12^th July with full details but if you haven’t seen the original e-mail please contact Anton Sweet (asweet@somerset.gov.uk) for further details.  Closing date for nominations is 10^th September 2021.

TUPEs & New Academies

If you are outsourcing services and have a number of staff who will be subject to TUPE and moving to a new employer or your school is converting to an Academy or moving MAT, please do not submit any leaver forms as this will complicate the process – instead there is a staff data capture spreadsheet you can complete on our website.

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