LGPS Employer Responsibilities

As a new scheme employer you have statutory responsibilities under the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) Regulations 2013 (as amended).

There are other responsibilities under the LGPS that you have which are described in Lancashire County Council's Pensions Administration Strategy Statement. The statement can be found on the page below.

Lancashire County Pension Fund's Pensions Administration Strategy Statement

All the information you need to discharge your responsibilities as an LGPS employer is contained within the Employer area of the LPPA Website. 

If you have a third party payroll provider, you need to authorise that they can deal with LPPA and the Fund. Please ensure that you are clear about which duties your contractor will undertake, and which you may have to undertake yourselves. Note that the ultimate obligation to meet employer responsibilities rests with the scheme employer.

• Third party authorisation form

To ensure that you receive important information about the scheme, please complete the contacts form below. Your nominated authorised users can also maintain contacts in the Secure Employer Area. Note that even if you have a third party payroll provider, you should ensure that your own internal contacts are represented so that you will receive important information about the pension scheme.

• Employer Contacts form

Monthly Return

You will need to provide personal data and pay and contributions data in respect of your employees. Most of the data collected by LPPA is done via the LGPS Monthly Return. From this file LPPA will create new member records, post contributions and pay to member records, and make changes to employee personal and hours data.  The financial totals in the file should match the contributions submitted from payroll totals, if they do not this will be queried with you. Because you will submit a Monthly Return every pay period, you will not need to also submit a year end file.

For more information on submitting the data collection file please see LPPA's website.

Each employer and payroll provider is assigned codes to use in the Monthly Return – please complete the Payroll Provider information form below.

• Payroll Provider Information Form

Submission of Employer and Employee Contributions

When you are set up as a new employer you will be assigned an employer contribution rate as outlined in the Admission and Termination Policy. This will be reviewed at each triennial valuation of the pension fund. The Policy and Valuation report can be found here.

We will require a direct debit mandate to be completed so that contributions can be collected each month. You will then need to submit a contributions remittance detailing the amount of employer and employee contributions payable during a particular month, by 6^th of the following month. Direct debits for the submitted remittances will be deducted on 19th, or last banking day before. The contributions remittance is submitted directly to the pension fund via the Your Pension Service Portal. To get access to the portal to be able to pay over contributions you should email ⁠pensionsfinance@lancashire.gov.uk.

Employee contributions will be based on the pensionable pay for an employment - further details can be found here.

Online forms

You will also need to submit online forms in the following circumstances. The online forms can be found in LPPA's UPM Employer Portal (you need to "start a process" to access them) -

Leaver Form – LPPA require a leaver form to notify when someone leave the LGPS*. It is essential that this is submitted as soon as possible before or after leaving.

*You do not need to complete a leaver form for someone who is under age 55 at leaving, unless they have died in service or retired on ill health grounds. For under 55s, you notify LPPA of a leaver via the monthly return.

Estimate Request – you can run estimates for your own members in the UPM employer portal. For more information see here.

Pension Pot Adjustments Form – to be submitted to notify of corrections to previously submitted Monthly Return (for example, for retrospective opt outs or new joiners) - this form is not within UPM and can be found at Calculators & forms • Local Pensions Partnership Administration (lppapensions.co.uk)

Other Responsibilities

1. There are mandatory discretions that Scheme Employers must publish and send to the Pension Fund - see "Discretions".
2. Ill Health Retirement - see Ill Health • Local Pensions Partnership Administration (lppapensions.co.uk)
3. Appeals – see Appeals • Local Pensions Partnership Administration (lppapensions.co.uk)

Training and Support

To help you get started and ensure you are fully aware of your responsibilities as an LGPS Scheme Employer,  LPPA can provide an induction and other training and support

Training • Local Pensions Partnership Administration (lppapensions.co.uk)