June 2022

Employer Focus Sessions

As mentioned in May’s Edition, our next topic is Pensionable Pay and will include why, where and when we need it along with how to calculate Full-Time equivalent (FTE) pensionable pay. The session will be held on Tuesday 5th July 2022.  

Please register your interest by submitting the relevant form:

Devon Fund Employers

Somerset Fund Employers

We look forward to seeing you there.

Devon Pension Fund Member Survey

For Devon Fund Employers Only 

The Pension Fund has a duty to achieve the best returns that it can at an acceptable level of risk. This will ensure that the scheme remains affordable to fund members and local taxpayers, and has the funds available to meet its responsibility to pay members’ pensions over the long term.

Within that parameter, the Fund also seeks to be a responsible owner of the assets in which it invests and seeks a sustainable future for our future pensioners. This includes engaging with companies on how they manage their businesses responsibly with regard to a range of issues, and how they are looking to transition their businesses to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The survey should only take around 4-5 minutes to complete. The survey can be accessed via the following link.

Stewardship Survey - Devon Pension Fund

All individual responses will be kept confidential. Please include the privacy notice in any communication with staff: Privacy Notice February 2022.docx (sharepoint.com)

Employer role training

The LGA still have some places left on their training days running on a variety of dates between 28 June and 20 September 2022 with a mixture of online and in person events. 

Please see their website for more details.

Statutory guidance on special severance payments

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) has published some guidance on what constitutes a special severance payment and confirms that:

• strain cost related to the early payment of LGPS benefits under regulation 30(6) or (7) (flexible retirement, redundancy or efficiency retirement over age 55) does not constitute a special severance payment
• strain cost of awarding additional pension under regulation 31 of the LGPS Regulations 2013 may constitute a special severance payment, depending on the terms of the individual’s contract
• strain cost related to waiving an actuarial reduction when a member retires under regulation 30(5) may constitute a special severance payment, depending on the terms of the individual’s contract.

Please read the full guidance for more details.

LGA guides updated

The LGA published new versions of the HR guide (v4.2) and Payroll guide (v4.2).

These guides can be found on the Employer guides and documents page of www.lgpsregs.org.

Automatic enrolment guidance

In June 2021, the Pensions Regulator (TPR) updated its Automatic enrolment detailed guidance.

The guidance has been updated to remove:

• out of date content relating to an employer's staging date
• the effect on the qualifying person exception as a result of the changes to the cross-border pension requirements following the UK's exit from the EU.

AVC’s and salary sacrifice

The LGA have created a guide that sets out what they think administering authorities and employers need to be aware of in relation to salary sacrifice SCAVC arrangements. In the view of the LGA a member can elect to have both an AVC and a SCAVC at the same time and are not restricted to paying one or the other. This is different to the previous view that was outlined previously where they said that if a member already had an AVC and they take out a SCAVC with their employer, they must stop paying into their existing AVC plan.

Returning Officers

If you employ a Returning Officer, please could you email the Employer & Communications team confirming their full name, National Insurance Number, your employer name and Altair number (00123 for example) along with whether or not they are paying into the LGPS in that role. This is an annual exercise we run to ensure the records we hold are correct so we would be grateful if you could respond by 8^th July 2022.

Pension Administration Reminders:

Employer Pensions Discretions Policy - As mentioned in April’s edition, please take time to review your employer discretion policy. Some things to consider:

• Is it still fit for purpose?
• Is it affordable?
• Have you included all employer discretions - mandatory and non-mandatory as recommended?

Our website includes full guidance and an example template to help you formulate and review your discretions in line with the regulations. Following the review please send a copy of your current or updated policy to the Employer & Communications team.

Annual Allowance 2021/22 - Please remember to provide your scheme members information for the required annual allowance exercise by 5^th July 2022. Please revisit the April edition of the Pensions Line for more information.

Alternative Leaver form - Do you receive work activities stating the ESS leaver form is blank? If so, there is an alternative leaver process for employers who do not currently download and re-upload the leaver form on the same day. A template form is available to be used internally at your end to complete and arrange for checking/sign off ahead of uploading to ESS. Then when the leaver form is ready to be made live on ESS, the alternative leaver form is created so that you can copy and paste the details from yours to the ESS version. If you think this process might work better for you, please contact Emma Davies who will provide more details.

Keep us updated with any changes in staff responsible for completing our forms and submitting pension data (authorised signatories) via our online form.

If you are changing your Payroll Provider, please contact the Employer & Communications Team so that we can help you through the process and make sure you retain access to historical payroll information.

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.

TUPEs & New Academies – please do not submit any leavers forms if you are outsourcing services and have a number of staff who will be subject to TUPE or your school is converting to an Academy or moving Trusts. Instead, you will need to follow the process on our website.

Useful Links

Peninsula Pensions Employers' Pages

LGPS regulations and guidance

Fund Investments

LGPS National Website

Employer & Communications Team Mailbox

Previous editions of Pensions Line

Peninsula Pensions
Great Moor House
Bittern Road
Sowton Industrial Estate
Exeter EX2 7NL
Tel: 01392 383000
Peninsula Pensions is provided by Devon County Council and is a shared service with Somerset County Council