HR and Payroll bulletin - September 2025

Pensions 

We’ve updated our retirement and pensions section on the intranet with clear, accessible information and step-by-step guides. These resources are also available on the staff area of our website.

How well do you know your pension? 

Take our 5 easy challenges  

Although Pension Awareness Week has now come to an end, it is still a great time to learn more about your pension and how it works.

The campaign, which started on 15 September, was run by Pension Geeks to help people feel more confident about their pensions. As part of the week, there were a series of fun challenges to help you get started.

Our Local Government Pension Scheme administrator, LPPA, joined in by setting their own challenges too. If you did not get chance to take part last week, it is not too late – why not give a few of them a go this week?

Challenge 1 – Log in to PensionPoint (your secure online portal) and review your pension benefits. 

Visit the PensionPoint website and log in (or register if you haven’t already).  

You may also find LPPA’s article about the benefits of a workplace pension useful to learn more about your pension benefits.  

Challenge 2 – Find your forgotten pensions via the Pension Tracing service. 

Visit the Looking for a lost pension page on the LPPA website for more information. 

You may also find LPPA’s Pension Tracing Day article useful to understand why this is important now more than ever.   

Challenge 3 – Use the benefit calculators on PensionPoint to work out how much money you’ll have for your retirement.  

Log in to PensionPoint to start using our calculators.  

You may also find the Planning for retirement page useful on the LPPA website to understand how your pension is calculated.  

Challenge 4 – Think about your future finances and consider the options to boost your pension.  

Visit the Boosting your pension benefits page on the LPPA website to learn more.  

You may also find LPPA’s Retirement checklist useful when thinking about the different things to consider.    

Challenge 5 – Update your beneficiaries to help ensure you leave something behind for the people you care about.  

Log in to PensionPoint to get started. 

You may also find LPPA’s ‘Everything you need to know about nominating a beneficiary’ article useful to understand more about who and how you can nominate.  

Vivup employee benefit - tax reminder 

If you have purchased an item through the Vivup Salary Sacrifice scheme and received the item(s) between 6 April 2024 and 5 April 2025 will receive a P11D and this information will be submitted to HMRC. HMRC may adjust your tax code to recover any tax owed.

The P11D will show the total amount of orders made within a tax year (6 April to 5 April) and not the amount sacrificed in accordance with HMRC regulations. The full taxable benefit arises at the start of the scheme (when the transfer of ownership occurs) so employers can't split P11D figures across multiple years.

If you purchased goods through the salary sacrifice scheme, you will have signed an agreement with Vivup that states: 

I understand that there will either be a change to my Tax code, or a Tax charge will be taken at source by participating in the scheme.  

Under the salary sacrifice scheme, the council allows employees to purchase household or electrical items under an agreement that enables them to sacrifice some of their salary in exchange for a 'benefit', i.e. household or electrical items. In practice, this means that your monthly gross salary will be reduced, resulting in an initial saving on tax and savings on National Insurance, and pension contributions.

Please raise a Service Request with AskHR if you require further information about how this may affect you.

Long Service Award – Increase from 1 July 2025

The Long Service Award amount has been reviewed and increased to £405 (excluding VAT) effective from 1 July 2025.

Please see the step-by-step guide below if you need support claiming your long service award. 

  • Access your Oracle Fusion account (Me>Employment Info) to check your employment dates and LCC service history
  • Calculate Your Total Service by adding up your years of contractual LCC. If they total 20 years or more, you’re eligible to claim
  • Complete and submit your award application – you can access the form by visiting the guide on the intranet or on the staff area of our website.

If you've had a break in service or your records don't match what you expect, there are a few ways to check your service history:

  • For records before 2004, LPPA can provide full-service history dates if you've paid into the LGPS.
  • AskHR may be able to assist with records from 2004 onwards. – Please raise a Service Request on Oracle Fusion.

Compressed hours 

If your working arrangement involves compressed hours, meaning you work full-time or part-time hours over a shorter working week or fortnight, you will have an agreed set work nine hours. Oracle Fusion defaults to 7.4 hours so if you work longer days, you'll need to edit the entry and amend the hours before submitting toit to your manager for approval. 

For further details, please refer to the Compressed hours guidance on the intranet.

Absence Trigger Report for managers 

If you are a manager you can run a report on Fusion that provides details of all employees in your service/team who have reached a sickness absence trigger.

The report can be found via HCM Reports > Human Resources > (Under LCC Line Manager) > choose report HR036b. Use the filters at the top of the page to choose which report you want to run, either showing employees who have had absence of two weeks plus or the report that show employees who have had three plus occurrences.

Exit journey 

Understanding why employees choose to leave our organisation has never been more important. The Exit Journey in Fusion is designed to gather valuable insights from exiting employees to help us understand any issues and support our ongoing recruitment and retention efforts.

How does it work? 

The Exit Journey will be triggered for all council employees and workers, excluding teaching and non-teaching employees in schools, once a termination is input into Fusion.

Completing the Journey on Fusion, including the survey, is optional but we would strongly encourage everyone to get involved and share their experiences.

  • Whenever a manager processes a resignation or retirement on Fusion, the system will generate a task inviting the employee to complete an exit survey.
  • The employee can access the survey on any work or personal device by logging into Fusion.
  • The employee can provide as much or as little information in the survey as they choose, then they click Submit once complete. 

What will we do with the information provided 

People Services will receive a report of all completed exit surveys once the employee's termination date has passed to help us identify any issues or areas for improvement. Collated exit survey data will only be shared with leadership teams when appropriate and to additionally support those efforts. 

AskHR helpdesk support 

AskHR is Lancashire County Council’s customer service helpdesk for all people-related matters, supporting employees, managers, former employees, future employees and job candidates and can offer advice and support for queries about the

following:

  • Salary payments, deductions, and tax issues
  • People policies, procedures, and entitlements, including absence management
  • Employees benefits and entitlements such as pensions, benefit schemes and allowances

Please raise your concern with your line manager first or submit a Service Request on Oracle Fusion and AskHR will respond within 3 working days. For further support and guidance please contact the AskHR advice line on 01772 535355 (8am – 5pm). 

Useful information, support and links 

Payroll deadlines 2025

Please make sure all payment claims are completed in line with our published payroll deadlines which are available on the intranet to guarantee changes are made in time for pay day. 

Payroll feedback 

If you would like to give any feedback to our Payroll team, email  payroll-feedback@lancashire.gov.uk.