Issue - meetings

The Committee had before it a report by the Chief Officer – Finance which provided various updates and recommendations (if applicable) to changes to the North East Scotland Pension Fund.

The report provided an update on the recent IT issues which had led to a delay in the issuing of payslips to around 26,000 pensioners; and an issue which had arisen whereby the software provider for the BACs payments had advised that the software used for sending the Fund’s BACs payments would no longer work following an update at the end of April, without a change being made.  The Fund had notified the Council’s IT service and made requests to allow the new software to be downloaded and installed, however as of the time of writing the report, the issue had still to be resolved.  This had therefore been reflected in the Risk Register at Appendix 1 of the report.  An update was also provided on the Public Service Pension Schemes (Rectification of Unlawful Discrimination)(Tax) Regulations 2025 which came into force on 24 April 2025; as well as updates on breaches of law, a review of AVC arrangements and the updated Termination Policy.

The report advised that the following documents had also been updated:-

·       Fire Safety (Local) Policy (minor amendments for formatting/clarity, and addition of new Teams Channel)

·       Communications Policy (new section added covering Social Media, amended frequency of Committee & Board bulletin to quarterly and re-inserted same for Employer bulletin, added other publications from website)

·       Corporate Governance & Corporate Social Responsibility Policy (updated reference to latest fiduciary duty guidance, updated Fund value and reference to voting, both passive and active, being carried out in-house)

·       Compliance with Myners Principles (expanded CIPFA acronym for clarity, added references to Appointment and Management of Advisers and Service Providers Policy, updated frequency of Employer Bulletin to quarterly, updated documents available on website)

·       Record Keeping Policy (minor grammatical amendments, updated PAS version)

·       Data Protection Policy (very minor amendments for clarification/grammar)

·       Training Policy (very minor amendments for clarification on training requirements and grammar)

·       Overpayments Policy (added in paragraph covering ex Strathclyde Firstbus members, minor corrections for clarification)

·       Systems Access Policy (updated Altair password section and appendix)

·       Statement of Investment Principles (minor updates to direct investment figure, voting paragraph and additional footnote to table)

The report recommended:-

that the Committee –

(a)      approve the updates to the Fund policy documents as set out in 6.2 of the main report;

(b)      approve the updated Termination Policy as set out in 7.2 of the main report; and

(c)      note the remainder of the report for reassurance.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)       in relation to the table on page 198 of the pack (Key Administration Tasks), to note the comments from Members that the layout was confusing and that officers would review the presentation for future reports; and

(ii)       to approve the recommendations.