East Sussex Pension Fund are delighted to announce that they have won the 2023 award for best LGPS Governance at the LAPF awards. This award is testament to the hard work and dedication shown by the team.

Governance is about having a clear purpose and strategy, the right skills and experience available, managing risks and conflicts of interest, and making sure the pension scheme provides value for members.

Image of the LAPF Investments Awards 2023 for Governance awarded to East Sussex Pension Fund.

To win the award, the Fund had to provide evidence that demonstrated how they had performed against four distinctive areas.

1

The identification and implementation of processes to ensure that all parties are aligned with the long term objectives of the Fund.

Evidence that the Fund has met this objective:
Integrated Governance and Compliance team in place.
Process mapping and improvement for all admin activities in progress.
Monthly team meetings include all officers in order to information share as appropriate.
Fortnightly management meeting to ensure everyone is working to shared goals, collaboratively; in line with regulation and policy.
Robust suite of polices, regularly improved to ensure alignment to overarching objectives, generate further efficiencies, be best in class and all accessible to members.
Training co-ordinator and strategy allows for improved knowledge and understanding following regulatory changes.

2

Governance of shared external services including pools.

Evidence that the Fund has met this objective: 
Officers meet service providers monthly to discuss tasks, concerns, and horizon scanning.
Strong relationships allow robust exchanges and information sharing for resilient governance.
Providers are covered by the conflict-of-interest policy, detailed contracts are in place with cyber testing of systems to ensure they are ‘fit for purpose’.
Numerous Officers interact with the Pool, attending working groups with an internal update meeting fortnightly to aid consistent messages and knowledge.
Officers and Access Pool Joint Committee representative actively participate to drive governance of the Access Pool forward including on procurement panels.

3

Management and mitigation of risks.

Evidence that the Fund has met this objective: 
The risk register is reviewed and discussed by Board and Committee quarterly.
Officers are empowered to identify new risks for consideration. Any red risks will have further actions post mitigation.
Senior Officers routinely discuss key and sensitive risks plus those not on the risk register and mitigations.
All risks identified are recorded, including mitigation and risk scoring is routinely reviewed in line with the Risk Management strategy.
Risk is assessed explicitly in the actuarial valuation, stewardship report and accounts.

4

How the Pension Board assists in the governance of the Fund.

Evidence that the Fund has met this objective: 
The Pensions Board reviews all areas of governance and administration providing feedback on everything to the Pensions Committee prior to decision-making.
The training programme is aligned to Board knowledge needs to allow robust challenge and information requests or further topics for focus. 
Members sit on working groups, including the Board established Communications group, to support assessment of governance, risk and to generate improvement at an operational level.
Board members periodically observe Pool Joint Committee.
Board report to committee annually on achievements and focus.