Cornwall Council admits pension error
Hundreds of people in the Duchy could be given a rebate.
Hundreds of people working for Cornwall Council could be set for a rebate after it was discovered they had been overcharged for their pension contributions.
In March this year an employee asked the council to review their pensions contributions as they believed that they had overpaid.
The council discovered that she was correct and have now started to review contributions made since 2014.
It was found that when staff received extra payments – for overtime or temporary promotions etc – their pension contributions were increased but were then not readjusted when they went back to their standard pay grade.
The council has calculated that 565 people may have overpaid their contributions in 2019/20 at a combined total of £30,404.
Work has now started to look at all the payments made since 2014 and the council says that as well as its own direct employees it could also affect other organisations which use the council’s payroll services.
The issue was reported to the council’s audit committee last week when it was also admitted that the council had already been notified by other employees who had been overcharged and were just reimbursed without any other action being taken to assess the extent of the issue.
Council officers told the committee that they expected all the work to be completed and all repayments made by the end of March 2021.
The issue had now been resolved and it was not expected that similar overpayments would occur.
But audit committee chairman David Harris was unhappy that the issue had previously been highlighted but not been investigated fully.
“Clearly people have queried the issue before March 2020. They queried it, it was corrected and they received repayment. Why did nobody ever flag it and say ‘have we got a problem here?’.”
David Harris, Audit Committee Chairman, Cornwall Council
Patrick Weir, head of people and change at the council, said that not all staff would have questioned it “due to the small amounts of money involved”.
He said that the isolated cases which were reported were resolved individually and were considered to be closed.
Cllr Harris questioned why nobody thought to check the rest of the system to ensure that there wasn’t a wider problem.
“While the numbers are quite small the number of people affected is significant. This seems to be a large failure of process.”
Chris Butters, Independent Member of the Audit Committee, Cornwall Council
And he asked why there was no mention in the report to the committee about accountability for the issue.
“This is something that could have irritated a lot of people but the post mortem is entirely forward looking with no retrospective recognition that somewhere in this there is a failure.”
Chris Butters
Mr Weir told the committee that the council’s payroll covers 5,500 people who currently work directly for the council.
But he admitted that the issue could also affect people who have since left the council. He said that work was being done to contact them should they need to be repaid.
It is estimated that the average repayment would be around £50 per employee affected.
“I take this really serious and I do see it as a failure of operating standards.”
Tracie Langley, Chief Finance Officer, Cornwall Council
She said she was personally overseeing the work which was being done to rectify the problem.
“Most employees if they receive a payment of £50 from the council will say ‘that is nice I can afford to have a drink this weekend’.
“We have put our hands up, we have admitted it. Nobody has died, let’s learn the lesson and move on.”
Cllr Bob Egerton