County Council Failure Meant Part-Time Firefighters Missed Out On Pensions

Published on: 30 Apr, 2019
Updated on: 2 May, 2019

By Rebecca Curley

local democracy reporter

An investigation has been launched after internal auditors for Surrey County Council (SCC) discovered an error had caused hundreds of on-call firefighters to miss the chance to join a modified pension scheme.

The “complete breakdown of effective governance” and “management oversight” has meant the Pensions Regulator reviewing the breach of process and whether the SCC is responsible for meeting any liabilities.

A report into how officers from SCC and Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) failed to carry out an “options exercise” in a modification of the Fire Pension Scheme concluded the actions are a “significant concern”.

SCC says it is now “working hard to put things right” and it will “make sure nothing like this happens again”. The failings date from 2014 and 2015 when there were about 200 retained firefighters (RFF) in Surrey.

Historically, RFFs were precluded from a 1992 pension scheme for whole-time firefighters, but have been entitled to join the Fire Pension Scheme (FPS) since 2006. A change in legislation gave them access to a modified section of the FPS providing similar pension benefits to the 1992 scheme.

Fire-authority finance directors were then asked by the Department of Communities and Local Government in 2013 to provide information to identify the current and former retained firefighters at the time who would be entitled to join the scheme.

But a special review by SCC internal auditors in 2018/19 found this “options exercise” for Surrey’s retained firefighters never happened.

Key findings from the internal audit review by Orbis (SCC’s partnership with Brighton and Hove City Council and East Sussex County Council) found the failure “can only be attributed to a complete breakdown of effective governance, management oversight and personal accountabilities by a number of officers”.

Many of the officers involved are no longer employees of SFRS or the county council and so there has been a “loss of an effective audit trail to fully understand the events of the time”.

And the review was unable to find evidence of effective planning by officers to complete the government-required work by the deadline. But auditors did discover that although the Surrey “options exercise” was left incomplete, the same officers supported East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service (ESFRS) with its “options exercise”.

They also found that at the time “there was significant additional pressure” within the pensions administration department “compounded by staff turnover and physical office moves”.

The report will be presented to the Surrey Local Firefighters’ Pension Board meeting on Wednesday, May 1.

A SCC spokesman said: “We acted straightaway after discovering clear historic failures dating back to 2014 and 2015 and are working hard to put things right as quickly as possible for the on-call firefighters affected.

“This has included launching an internal audit and while many of the staff involved in managing fire-service pensions at the time have now left and steps have already been taken to strengthen our work in this area, we’ll act on the report to make sure nothing like this can happen again.”

Government inspectors reported in 2018 “serious concerns” with SFRS and the county council is undertaking a major transformation of the fire service. A consultation is underway on changes that include reducing night-time cover.