EPN386 - Civil Service Pension Scheme

Action: To note the instructions and take action where necessary

Timing: Immediate

The first 2015 Employer Readiness Assessment began in April 2014. The purpose of the Assessment, and those that will follow, is to help you plan and prepare to meet your responsibilities in implementing the 2015 pension scheme.
The Employer Engagement Team has been in contact with you directly over recent weeks to discuss your Self-Assessment. We have used these discussions to reiterate what actions you need to take to ensure you understand the 2015 requirements.
The Team has also used the discussions to record a RAG status of your overall readiness to deliver the required 2015 changes. Your RAG status will be used to decide if any intervention is needed to help you make progress. This could include escalation to your HR/Finance Director, as set out in the Employer Readiness process (please see EPN381).
We will review your progress against your April RAG rating at the next round of Readiness Assessments, which will begin in July 2014. We will send a revised July Self-Assessment in early June 2014.
Please note that we expect your HR/Finance Director to attend the next Readiness Assessment meeting with you. We will be in touch with you in due course to arrange a meeting for July or August.
To help you avoid having areas formally marked for improvement at your next Readiness Assessment, you should act on the following instructions.

You must not rebrand or re-write any of the 2015 scheme communications material. Your role is to sign-post members to the Civil Service pension scheme website.
We strongly suggest that you do not hold 2015 scheme road shows, workshops or awareness sessions. Our experience from introducing premium in 2002 is that some members interpreted the engagement sessions as their employer providing them with advice. If a member takes a wrong decision based on this perceived advice then the employer would be liable for making good any financial loss.
You must not answer any technical questions regarding the 2015 scheme changes. You should tell members to contact MyCSP.
Where members do not have access to the internet at home or at work you must give them hard copies of the scheme communications. This is with the exception of the Options Packs, which will be sent directly to members in October 2014 (unless you asked to manage the distribution yourself).

You are responsible for ensuring your Shared Service/Payroll provider receives the requirements to make changes to your systems and interfaces to support the administration of the 2015 scheme.
You must work with your Shared Service/Payroll provider to understand how to initiate these changes and the lead-in times for development. The 1 April 2015 scheme implementation date is immovable and you must ensure you are ready for implementation.
You must ask your supplier to confirm the timeframes for the analysis, design, development, testing and deployment stages of their plans. You must include these dates in your project plan.
We recommend that employers who use the same payroll provider work together to share experiences and test understanding of the requirements in order to implement the changes effectively. To help you at Annex A is a list of employers who are willing to share knowledge with others who use the same payroll provider.

You are responsible for completing your Self-Assessment returns, not your shared service/payroll provider, unless you have agreed for them to do so.

You must urgently review the technical documentation we gave you in April 2014. We sent you a link to this document in an e-mail. If you need the link to be resent contact 2015employers@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk
The Payroll Developers Guide sets out the required changes to your HR Payroll Interface for the 2015 scheme changes. The Enhanced Validation Document also sets out the additional data validations for the introduction of Compendia later this Summer. It is imperative that you assess the impact of the requirements and ensure there is enough time for your Shared Service/Payroll provider to deliver the changes.
In Annex A to EPN374 we referred to holding Payroll Developers Workshops. Based on the feedback since giving you the Payroll Developers Guide we do not believe a technical workshop is needed.

We have given you four Employer Impact Documents, which explain the business rules that underpin the Payroll Interface Changes. They set out where the 2015 scheme is different from nuvos, and are broken down as follows:

You now have all of the information you need to move forward with your system and process changes.

For pension purposes, from 1 April 2015 retrospective pay awards will be allocated to the period earned not paid. MyCSP will be responsible for allocating earning to the period earned. This means you will not have to change the way you send MyCSP information about retrospective pay awards.

Contacts

If you have a question about the distribution of EPNs or you need to receive them in a different format contact employerpensionnotice@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk.

You can find electronic copies of the Employers’ Pension Guide, all current EPNs and forms on this website.

This notice is for employers and should not be issued to scheme members.

If members have a question about their pension they can find information on this website or by contacting MyCSP.

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