Pension gaps

[Heyha]

Hi all
I've been trying to resolve a few gaps in my pension service from over 10 years ago- the school gave me their payroll contact, I've supplied dates and details but not had anything back yet. I tried a few years ago but never got a response so suspect this LA is going to be difficult (got another one sorted within a week of contacting them so I don't believe it can be that hard to do assuming staff are working and systems available).

My question is what do you do after those initial attempts to resolve with the LA in question fail? What's the escalation step? They have made two big mistakes in the space of two years which has lost about 50% of my service at that school, I was continuously employed, not even a strike day to complicate things.

If you have your start and finish dates, that's all you need. But it needs to be a document you can scan and upload.

Have you kept your P60s?

I found LAs fine when they worked in-house, just crap when payroll was outsourced to Crapita.

Don't stop. Keep phoning.

Note to self: keep copies of all employment records. I did this from 1978 and my God I needed it to get my teacher's pension.

I've got all my P60s and P45s, glad I did as that had my payroll number on which I'd have had no clue about otherwise. I gave this LA the same info that I gave the one who turned it around super-fast so fingers crossed that's all they need...I think I might be emailing into the void at the moment so I guess a phone call or twenty is my next step.

I can't believe how common it is for people to have gaps in their record that they know nothing about, there was quite a bit on twitter last year which is what made me look at mine again.

I was horrified to find I had £0 in mine (Northamptonshire) when I checked last week. They don’t reply to emails and their phone lines have been cancelled because of Corona.
The TPS told me that the money is in the treasury but hasn’t been allocated to me because pay roll didn’t fill out the correct form at the start of my teaching career.
I really don’t know what to do next?

I’ve been paying in for years.

You will have to contact the school/s HR person and get it corrected. It took my 5 years to get my missing years added. I went from sending the occasional monthly email to dropping into her office every week to threatening legal action as pension contributions were deducted every month and what were they doing with my money. Following that threat I sat with the school bursar and oversaw the correction.

Even though I had payslips TPS would not sort it out as that has to be done by your school employer. They correct problems not the ever changing payroll companies.

Luckily we can now all check TPS online on a regular basis. I do check after my missing years experience.

@AyrshireAmbler49

I was horrified to find I had £0 in mine (Northamptonshire) when I checked last week. They don’t reply to emails and their phone lines have been cancelled because of Corona. The TPS told me that the money is in the treasury but hasn’t been allocated to me because pay roll didn’t fill out the correct form at the start of my teaching career. I really don’t know what to do next?

Your school employer has to sort it out. Start with your current school. They can fix this online

As obvious as it sounds, keep a record of all phone calls. I got into this habit after my DH's death, and sorting out probate in Au and UK, as well as UK pensions, etc.

I still use it: an A4 ring binder with A-Z file pages and lots of A4 lined paper to record when I phoned, date and time, who I spoke to, what about, and the outcome.

I found I had one year missing and had to go direct to the LA (Birmingham) who sorted it out within a week. Our school business manager said that as we were employed by the Council and not the school, we had to sort it out directly with the LA.