Kingston upon Thames' Pension Fund is facing potential delays in meeting the legal deadline for the McCloud remedy, which addresses age discrimination within the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). The issue was discussed at the Pension Board meeting on 9 July 2025.
The board received an update from Tom Taylor, Interim Head of Pensions Administration, who explained that essential software deliveries from Civica have been pushed back. These upgrades are necessary to rectify members' benefits and perform bulk recalculations to comply with the McCloud remedy. According to the meeting information, Kingston is scheduled to receive these upgrades into their live environment on 8 July 2025, subject to feedback from three test Funds. The delay raises concerns about compliance by the 31 August 2025 deadline.
Mr. Taylor reassured the board that Kingston is not alone in this situation, stating that many other funds are facing similar challenges. He outlined the process for reporting a breach to the pension regulator:
If we're a month before the 31st of August going to regulators and look, we're really sorry, we've not been able to comply with this. Here's a clear project plan for getting us back on track. Our understanding from the funds that have already done that is they've turned around and said kind of good luck with delivering your plan.
Failure to meet the McCloud remedy deadline could result in a breach of the law, requiring the council to report itself to the pension regulator. However, Mr. Taylor indicated that the regulator is primarily concerned with having a clear action plan for remediation, rather than imposing immediate penalties.
Sam Burgess inquired about the process if data sets are not received from employers. Mr. Taylor responded that the council is seeking support from third-party benefits consultants to identify options for obtaining the data, particularly in cases where employers no longer have the data due to bankruptcy or cyber breaches. He said that the consultants would look at options such as using year-end returns and monthly contribution schedules to work out the data. As of the meeting, the council had received 78.1% of the data files from fund employers. The missing data includes historical employment data required to rectify age discrimination related to the McCloud remedy.
Mr. Burgess also raised a question about resource capacity and how to ensure that the focus and delivery for data integrity is as robust as the council's own, if third parties are inputting. Mr. Taylor said that anything the council does to seek support from a third party benefits consultant will be compliant. He said that the council is drawing up a plan assuming that there is no third party benefits support, but is also looking at options for third party support and how that would feed into the plan.
The risk around the failure by the software provider to provide compliance software compliant with the regulations has been upgraded to a red risk due to continuous delays with the McCloud remedy, according to the Governance and Risk Update. The specific criteria for classifying the risk as 'red' are the continuous delays and concerns raised around the software deliveries.
