North Yorkshire County Council

 

Pension Board

 

15 January 2026

 

Administration Report

 

1.     Purpose of the Report

To provide Pension Board members with an update on key initiatives undertaken by the administration team of the North Yorkshire Pension Fund (NYPF).

 

2.    Pension Fund Committee paper

Included for information at Appendix 1 is the covering paper and appendices provided to the Pension Fund Committee (PFC) for their November 2025 meeting.

 

3.    Breaches Log

Included at Appendix 2 is the NYPF’s Breaches Log for review. There are no new entries to report.

 

4.    Annual Benefit Statements

The 2025 annual benefit statement exercise is now fully completed. It is anticipated that we won’t be publishing benefit statements online from next year as the new member platform enables them to be displayed on screen.

 

5.    Major Projects

Triennial Valuation

The 2025 triennial valuation is progressing well with all individual employer results now issued and enquiries and responses being dealt with in a timely manner.

 

A handful of employers have requested to pay more than the required rate to smooth their budgets and to help protect from any potential increase in rates that might emerge at future valuations.

 

New TPR General Code of Practice

This work now falls under business as usual and compliance against the code will be checked in line with the Fund’s annual governance review.

 

McCloud

Following clarification from the LGA rectification has started with the first few members contacted with details about their uplift in benefits and what is owed in arrears and interest. We will report back on the total value of the extra benefits being paid and the number of members impacted when we have completed this stage of the project.

 

Pensions Dashboard

We were successfully ‘connected’ on 31 October with data being uploaded to the ISP daily and errors being dealt with promptly. We’ve been advised that consumer testing will continue throughout 2026 with defined benefit schemes coming into scope in the first part of the year.

 

It is unlikely that the MoneyHelper dashboard will be available to the public before mid 2027.

 

  

6.    Common and Conditional Data Scores

The Fund measures its data quality each year and provides the information to the Pensions Regulator in the annual return. Below is a table showing the data scores over the past three years.

 

Year

Conditional Score

Common Score

2023

88.81%

97.89%

2024

98.88%

96.51%

2025

94.44%

97.22%

 

The conditional data score has dropped as we have used the valuation data extract this year which gives us a more in depth analysis of the data.  

 

7.    LGPC Bulletins

The LGPC regularly issues bulletins, which can include actions for administering authorities. The NYPF reviews every bulletin and logs any actions highlighted. A log of the actions is included at Appendix 3 to enable Pension Board Members to ensure appropriate activities are being undertaken

 

8.    Pension Board Knowledge and Skills assessment

The Hymans’ National Knowledge Assessment was completed in October 2024 and each participant received their individual results reports upon completion of the assessment. There were 6 respondents from the Pension Board.

 

The questions were split into 8 sections:

 

Section 1 Committee Role and Pensions Legislation

Section 2 Pensions Governance

Section 3 Pensions Administration

Section 4 Pensions Accounting and Audit Standards

Section 5 Procurement and Relationship Management

Section 6 Investment Performance and Risk Management

Section 7 Financial Markets and Product Knowledge

Section 8 Actuarial Methods, Standards and Practices

 

Overall the NYPF ranked 4th out of 19 Funds who participated with a score of 68.27%. The average overall score of the Board was 70.5%. Below is a graph showing the results for each section. This graph shows the areas of strongest and weakest knowledge and understanding.

 

 

The two lowest scoring areas being Financial Markets and Product Knowledge and Actuarial Methods, Standards and Practices.

 

 

 

It is recommended that members of the Board revisit the Hymans Aspire LGPS Online Learning Academy at regular intervals as content does change. There are two specific modules that cover the two weakest topics above. These are modules 7 and 8. It is also expected that the recent Aon Valuation training session has assisted the Board in broadening it’s understanding of Actuarial methods. 

 

The full report is included at Appendix 4.

 

9.    Recommendation

9.1.  That Pension Board Members note the contents of this report.

9.2.  That Pension Board Members note the contents of the Breaches Log

 

Phillippa Cockerill

Head of Pensions Administration

County Hall

Northallerton

 

07 January 2026

Background Papers - Nil