Public sector governance services

We can advise on all aspects of public service pension and LGPS governance, providing advice, support and training. We can provide a full range of services from a quick chat about a policy or regulation to a comprehensive governance review across all areas, in line with the Pensions Regulator’s (TPR’s) General Code of Practice and the E&W Scheme Advisory Board’s Good Governance Recommendations.

Our services can improve governance effectiveness and can add value, for example by drafting or reviewing scheme documentation. This includes fund policies, manuals, consultation responses, strategy documents and reports for pension committees and local pension boards on current issues.

As Public Service pensions, and the LGPS in particular, continue to evolve and increase in complexity, we can help ensure your governance structures are effective, cost-efficient, compliant with regulation and achieve best practice standards.

We can provide training whenever required on a significant range of topics to different stakeholders to improve knowledge and understanding. The training would equip individuals with knowledge that is relevant to their roles and responsibilities. We can attend meetings, give webinars or one-on-one sessions. We can run training events for scheme managers, committee members, officers and pension board members to provide the opportunity to network with people in similar roles from other funds. We also frequently attend forums and AGMs to provide training to employers. We have an online library which can be made accessible to different stakeholders to support different levels of experience and learning.

Public service pension schemes have their regulations, statutory requirements and guidance, and any changes can happen quickly. We can provide additional support to funds in the form of project management or assisting with certain elements of a project when further resource is needed.

We regularly assist funds and individuals in assisting with Annual Allowance and Lifetime Allowance queries including completion or checking of calculations. We can also provide training sessions, officer workshops, member presentations and one-to-one support for members.

We work with a range of administrators across our LGPS funds, supporting and complementing your in-house services and staff. Good quality data is essential for our work and to allow us to add value and we support administrators using our online data checker. We help administering authorities and their employers understand TPR’s data requirements, including common and scheme specific data standards and data improvement plan expectations.

We can support LGPS funds with Barnett Waddingham secondees from our own team where a fund has resourcing issues, for example to help with large data exercises, McCloud calculations and preparing for the pensions dashboard. We can also support LGPS fund administrators where the necessary internal resource is not available or external reassurance is required, for example by performing or reviewing complex calculations for individuals with unusual circumstances.

We are often requested to assist in the provision of communication material for scheme members, pensioners, employers, administrators and elected members. This has ranged from newsletter articles, annual benefit statements, briefing notes, websites and training sessions. This can be supported by Barnett Waddingham’s specialist member communications team, DrumRoll.