July 2022

Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign postponed

We told you about "Pay your pension some attention” campaign in our August Pensions Line Special.

Following the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Pension Awareness decided to postpone the live shows as a mark of respect. The events were due to take place from Monday 12th to Friday 16th September but have now been rescheduled for Monday 31st October to Friday 4th November 2022.

More details can be found on their website.

Please share the Pay Your Pension Some Attention and the Retiring from active status webpages with your members.

Final pay bitesize training

The Local Government Association (LGA) have recently published final pay bitesize training.

This free, interactive training is aimed at employers and payroll providers.

It covers how to calculate final pay for members with final salary benefits. Final salary benefits were generally built up before April 2014. It also covers final pay protection where a member’s pensionable pay is reduced or restricted in certain circumstances.

Please have a look at the final pay bitesize training on the employer bite size training page of their website along with the recordings of our Pensionable Pay Focus sessions.

There is also some guidance on Pensionable Pay within our Employer's Guide to the LGPS on our website. 

The LGA have also released some more dates for the Employer Role Training which are both online via Teams. Please follow the links below for more details and to book your place:

8th December 2022

10th January 2023

We are hiring

We currently have the following vacancies within the team:

• Senior Pension Assistants (multiple) to work on our First Response, LGPS or Police & Fire Teams
• Pensions Assistants (multiple) to work on our LGPS or First Response teams
• Senior Team Manager to work on our Member Services Area (post will be on the link below soon)

Read the full job descriptions and apply at the Devon Jobs Website - any new jobs will also be added to this link.

Pension Administration Reminders:

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 Member's 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