This EPN provides information about this year’s Annual Assurance Statement (AAS) process.
Every participating Civil Service employer of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (including the PCSPS, alpha and associated compensation arrangements) must ensure that they carry out their responsibilities in relation to the administration of the scheme. You can find these responsibilities in the Participation or Admission Agreement, which employers must sign.
Both Civil Service and New Fair Deal employers must complete the Annual Assurance Statement (AAS). If you are a Civil Service employer, your Accounting Officer (AO) is required to complete the AAS. If you are a New Fair Deal employer, your Chief Executive Officer (CEO) must complete the AAS.
The AAS helps the Civil Service Pension Scheme’s AO carry out their obligations to the Scheme, namely:
To ensure that the internal controls and operational processes of participating employers are robust and carried out in accordance with participation and admission agreements
To confirm that your AO (if you are a Civil Service employer) or CEO (if you are a New Fair Deal employer) has undertaken the following obligations to the Civil Service Pension Scheme with appropriate care and due diligence:
to remind employers of their role and responsibilities in relation to the Scheme; and
to highlight areas of risk, where we would expect employers to focus their assurance.
We do not intend for the AAS to either provide a detailed assessment of process performance, nor duplicate reporting carried out elsewhere.
Detail
Completing and submitting the AAS
We will shortly be issuing the 2021/22 AAS to the individual(s) responsible for completing your organisation’s AAS, in accordance with our records. The steps below explain how to complete the AAS.
Step 1
Read the pop-up guidance on the AAS questionnaire as you answer the questions.
Complete the Declaration section of the AAS - your organisation’s AO (if you are a Civil Service employer) or CEO (if you are a New Fair Deal employer) will need to do this.
Step 3
Sign the Declaration section with either a wet (handwritten) or electronic signature. If you are not providing a wet signature, please include an email from your CEO/AO to show they have agreed to the contents of the questionnaire.
Step 4
Send the signed Declaration electronically, along with the completed AAS to AAS2022@mycsp.co.uk by Friday 9 September 2022.
When submitting your AAS, please note:
We will not accept an incomplete AAS
Your AAS will be marked as late if provided after Friday 9 September 2022
You must include your organisation’s name in the AAS and Declaration file names.
If you have not received your AAS by Monday 18 July 2022, please contact us at AAS2022@mycsp.co.uk.
The Scheme Administrator (MyCSP) is responsible for issuing and managing AAS returns to enable us to focus on analysing the results and related actions arising from the submission of assurances.
Changes to this year’s process
We have made the following improvements to this year’s AAS process:
We are continuing to accept the digital completion of the AAS to support employers’ flexible working practices
We have simplified the questionnaire to make it easier to complete
We’ve built enhanced validations in to the questionnaire to advise when further information and supporting documentation is required
