Agenda item

-           GDPR

-           Breaches log

1.       

2.       

3.       

4.       

5.       

6.       

7.       

8.       

9.       

10.       

11.       

12.       

13.       

14.       

15.       

16.       

17.       

18.       

19.       

20.       

21.       

22.       

23.       

24.       

25.       

26.       

27.       

28.       

29.       

30.       

31.       

32.       

33.       

34.       

35.       

36.       

37.       

38.       

39.       

40.       

41.       

42.       

43.       

44.       

45.       

46.       

47.       

48.       

49.       

50.       

51.       

52.       

53.       

54.       

55.       

56.       

57.       

58.       

59.       

60.       

61.       

62.       

63.       

64.       

65.       

66.       

67.       

68.       

69.       

70.       

70.1.      The Board considered a general update on matters related to the ESPF.

70.2.      The Chair asked whether employers had seen a draft of the Memorandum of understanding (MOU) due to be issued by ESPF to its employers as part of the changes brought about by the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). He also asked whether all 134 employers would sign up for it in time for the 25 May introduction of GDPR rules.

70.3.      WN said that the MOU would be a statement informing employers of the GDPR changes and would not require them to sign it, although it was not yet complete so had not been sent to employers.

70.4.      In regards to the Breaches Log, the Chair observed that for Churchill to have not been paying over pension contributions for some of its members appeared to be very concerning.  OO agreed that it was definitely a breach of the law. He said that it had involved an administrative error whereby a handful of employees’ and employer contributions had been collected by Churchill but not passed on to ESPF. The company had been informed about the breach and that it was to be reported, and were asked to consider ways of improving their payment system to ensure that these errors are picked up in future. He said that the company employs some 200 people so there is a monthly fluctuation in the amount of money coming to the Fund due to people leaving and joining their workforce (which comprised mainly of cleaners).

70.5.      Rezia Amin (RA) asked how long this issue had occurred for and whether employees knew.  OO said that it had gone on for a few years but that employees had not reported it as they had not been receiving annual benefit statements setting out their pension contributions. WN said that they would receive statements in the future.

70.6.      BR asked why it had not previously been picked up by Orbis Business Operations that employers were not providing these contributions. WN said that Churchill is an admitted body so Business Operations was aware of the individuals who were on the company’s payroll, however, monthly payment statements do not include a breakdown so it was not clear that the employee contributions were not included for certain individuals. The breach had not been identified as part of previous EOY returns, which do include breakdowns, due to staff not following up on the procedures in place to identify missing contributions.

70.7.      WN said that she was confident that all of the outstanding contributions can be identified and retrieved through the annual reconciliation process.

70.8.      RA asked whether there would be any penalties applied to Churchill. WN said that they were considering applying interest to the owed monies.

70.9.      RA asked if any of these staff had been TUPE’d to Churchill from East Sussex County Council in the past 2-3 years. OO said that he would produce the relevant figures for circulation.

70.10.   RA asked how individual employees had been affected financially. WN confirmed that they would not have been affected as the deductions were made to the employees each month by Churchill but had just not been paid on to the Fund.

70.11.   The Board RESOLVED to:

1) note the report;

2) provide figures for the number of employees TUPE’d from the Council to Churchill in recent years.