Date posted: 17/12/2014

Audience:

This notice will be of interest to:

  • HRDs/Finance Directors;
  • HR Manager;
  • Payroll Manager; and
  • Pension Leads.

Action:

To give the 2015 New Pension Scheme Implementation Programme your payroll and migration plans.

Timing:

Complete and return the spreadsheet provided by 5 January 2015.

Detail:

1.  Please note that we are at a critical phase of the programme now, and failure to provide this planning information will result in escalation to your HR Director. Senior Cabinet Office officials are seeking reassurance about Employers’ readiness to support the administration of alpha from 1 April 2015. In EPN410, we told you of our concerns about Employer readiness. The 2015 Programme needs details of your plans for both making payroll changes and migrating your workforce into alpha at the right time.

2.  As you know, migration is an Employer responsibility and failure to deliver will be visible at Ministerial level. Therefore, please make your HRD/Finance Directors aware of this EPN and brief them on your readiness.

Payroll

3.  We need you to tell us about your actions and plans for delivering the Developers Guide, contribution changes (EPN403) and the revised Developers Guide. For each of these changes we want to know:

  • The date you raised a Change Request with your third party payroll provider
  • The date you received, or expect to receive, their Impact Assessment
  • When development began or will begin
  • When development ended or will end
  • When you began testing, or expect to begin testing
  • When testing ended or will end
  • When you expect to implement

In addition you must tell us if there are any key risks and dependencies within your business that may impact on meeting your deliverables. For example, if you are changing your payroll provider/software. 

Migration

4.  We also need you to tell us about your plans to migrate the correct segments of your workforce to alpha. We need you to give us details of how and when you are going to complete the following requirements.

Public Service History

How and when you will:

  • Write to joiners since 31 March 2007 asking about their previous Public Service pension history (PSPH)
  • Analyse the PSPH member returns to decide if the member should be sent an Options Pack
  • Analyse the PSPH member returns to decide what scheme the member should be in.

Identify Migration Population

How and when you will:

  • Identify the fully protected group, and what the mechanism will be to record this information
  • Identify all of those in the tapered group through to February 2022 and what the mechanism will be to record this information
  • Identify all of those in the immediate enrolment group (1 April 2015) and what the mechanism will be to record this information
  • Change the current joiners / rejoiners process(es) to determine eligibility
  • Include current joiners / rejoiners in the main migration data cut
  • Identify exception groups
  • Migration data cut
  • Test migration data cut
  • Do migration
  • Identify on-going ill health retirement applications and exclude them from migration.

5.  To help you provide us with this information we have given you a spreadsheet at Annex A below. 

Day 1 Deliverables

6.  To get a detailed level of understanding of what you are delivering for 1 April 2015 at Annex B below is a spreadsheet that employers on the full or standard interface must complete.

7.  You will need to send this to your payroll provider / IT partner. This spreadsheet lists all of the data fields that must be delivered for day one, as outlined in the Developers Guides. This will help you, and us, understand what your payroll provider / IT partner is delivering. For those on a manual interface, we will be in touch separately.

Timescales and escalation

8.  You must return the completed Annex A and Annex B in the attached spreadsheet by 5 January 2015.  You should send your completed return to 2015employers@cabinetoffice.gov.uk Please note that we are at a critical phase of the programme now, and failure to provide this planning information will result in escalation to your HR Director.

Contact

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 Employer Pension Guide, all current EPNs and forms on our 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 your Pension Service Centre.

Attachments

Published:
17 December 2014
Last updated:
24 April 2023