Focus May 2025
Downloadable version
A downloadable version of this newsletter is available below.
We would like to acknowledge the hard work and commitment of our Scheme employers and say thank you for submitting your pension year end returns for 2024/25 by the 19 April 2025 deadline.
The prompt return of the year end returns will enable our Team to perform validation, tolerance and data cleansing exercises ahead of the formal Fund valuation and the issuing of the Annual Benefit Statements later this summer.
The Local Government Association (LGA) have published updated versions of the following Scheme member guides to account for the new 2025/26 rates and bands, as well as some other minor changes:
- Employee brief guide to the LGPS
- Member’s guide to AVCs
Local versions of the guides and factsheets have been updated on the Staffordshire Pension Fund website:
A brief guide to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
https://www.staffspf.org.uk/Members/Guide-to-the-LGPS/Brief-guide.aspx
Guide to additional voluntary contributions
https://www.staffspf.org.uk/Members/Forms/Improving-your-benefits/Additional-voluntary-contributions/Guide-to-additional-voluntary-contributions.aspx
Staffordshire Pension Fund will be working with Affinity Connect – who are one of the UK’s largest providers of retirement and redundancy services to the public sector – to offer pre-retirement courses for Scheme members.
The course will be around 2 and a half hours in duration and will be held online. It will be free to attend and open to employees of all our Scheme employers.
The course is aimed at those who are thinking about retirement within the next ten years and want to understand some of the key financial considerations.
We will be adding booking details to our website shortly and will circulate further details to you in a future edition of the Employer Focus newsletter. Although spaces on each course are limited, if demand is high, we can arrange for additional dates to be added.
Scheme members now have a greater expectation that they will be able to access information and perform tasks online rather than having to use post or telephone. Consequently, Staffordshire Pension Fund is looking to deliver more of our services digitally. This includes moving towards a position where the digital provision of information and documents is the default.
To facilitate the move towards digital engagement, the Fund provides an online member ‘My Pension Portal (MPP)’ where Scheme members can access their pension data and run calculations and projections.
Although MPP continues to be very popular, we are keen to encourage even more Scheme members to sign up to MPP. With this in mind, we would very much appreciate your assistance in promoting the use of My Pension Portal to your employees (LGPS members). We have provided some promotional text below and would be grateful if you could cascade this message via your internal mail system, intranet site, news bulletins, notice boards etc.
Suggested wording:
If you are a member of the Staffordshire Pension Fund, you can access your Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) records online.
My Pension Portal (MPP) is a simple to use, secure and user-friendly portal. MPP provides you with round the clock access to your Staffordshire Pension Fund record. This means you can:
- View your personal, financial and membership details.
- Run estimates on your pension with pension calculators.
- Calculate how much tax-free cash lump sum you could get on retirement.
- View the valuable life assurance and dependents pension provided.
- Easily update your contact details.
- View/amend your Death Grant nomination details.
- View your annual pension statements.
- Securely upload documents to your Pension record.
- Submit enquiries via the portal.
If you have not already registered, you can apply for an activation code on the Staffordshire Pension Fund’s website:
https://www.staffspf.org.uk/Calculator/Self-Service-Calculator.aspx
Click on the link to access My Pension Portal. You should click on the second option (central link) to Sign Up as a new user. You will need your National Insurance number and Date of Birth. The activation code will then be sent to your home address (please allow up to 10 working days). However, if Staffordshire Pension Fund already holds an email address on their records, your activation code will be sent to that email address.
Staffordshire Pension Fund will be upgrading My Pension Portal (MPP) to a new platform - Heywood Engage – later in 2025. The new service will include all the features currently in MPP but has been designed to be more user friendly for mobile phones/tablets and more interactive.
For users that are currently registered for MPP, we will be emailing them with instructions on how to access the new service, once it goes live (expected date November 2025).
We would be grateful if you could continue to circulate this newsletter to appropriate colleagues in your organisation for example, Human Resources, Payroll and Finance Department or alternatively provide us with their email address, so we can add them to our distribution list.
If you require any further information or clarification, please do not hesitate to email the Fund at pensions.comms@staffordshire.gov.uk