Complaints & Appeals
Last year the Authority received 5 formal complaints and 1 complaint that was made against an employer that we dealt with under our complaints procedure. This is more than we would like to receive but, when set against the amount of procedures that we regularly complete, (over 68,000 in total last year), the number of complaints received is relatively tiny. That is not to say that we view this number as either normal or acceptable and we have recently taken some specific steps in an effort to reduce numbers even further. Firstly, we formally introduced the concept of customer care into staff appraisals and this now forms part of the overall assessment of an individual’s performance. Managers have also been tasked with the specific objective of trying to reduce complaint numbers. Secondly, we introduced staff to the concept of identifying, and intervening at an earlier stage of a process, when things are not going smoothly and to decide whether a more bespoke service could be offered as an alternative to the set procedure already in place and being followed. Finally, all staff attended a series of presentations on handling complaints, formal and informal, to raise awareness of the effort involved in dealing with them and become better able to avoid them occurring in the first place. Zero complaints remains SYPA’s ultimate objective. The 5 complaints in question concerned a mixture of issues and no common themes were highlighted requiring special attention. They ranged from a complaint about the rigorousness of the ill-health retirement process to an incorrect divorce quotation. In relation to the ill-health procedure an explanation about fairness, consistency and protecting the Fund from unwarranted costs seemed to suffice. The erroneous divorce quotation was more serious and resulted in an incorrect court order being issued. The Authority paid the costs of revisiting the court order to ensure both parties received their correct pension share. Another complaint related to a Regulation change after the Authority had offered a member a once and for all lump sum in exchange for her small pension. Before the offer was accepted the Legislation changed and the member was no longer entitled to commute by the time she elected. The other two complaints involved the level of widow’s pension payable for a post- retirement marriage and a member’s entitlement in respect of a frozen refund after leaving the Scheme many years ago. None of the complaints this year went on to the Ombudsman and all but one was dealt with in the prescribed service standard time allowed of three working days.