News & Events

Welcome to the Spring 2008 edition of AtEase. 

Avon Pensions Fund’s newsletter for pensioner members of the fund.

Welcome to Avon Pension Fund’s Pensioner Newsletter for Spring 2008, keeping you informed with regular features such as pay dates for 2008/09, pensions increase and contact details. We also include some general articles, which you may find useful and some details about Age Concern and the National Fraud Initiative.

This issue also sees the retirement of the section ‘Legal Ease’, a regular feature in past issues, making way for more details about your pension. 
If you would like to see the return of this section in future editions please let us know.

If reading any of the stories in this issue inspires you to pick up a pen yourself please write to Ben Altoft at the address below.
You never know, your efforts could be published in our next issue and that’s not all – the best article we receive will also win a book voucher.

Please feel free to contact us on the usual free phone number 0800 0644 155, or email Ben Altoft on:benjamin_altoft@bathnes.gov.uk. 

Tony Bartlett
Business and Financial Manager
Bath & North East Somerset Council

Contents

The New LGPS 2008 - Does it affect me?

You may be aware that the LGPS has recently been changed again; however, it will only be the members who retire on or after the 1^st April 2008, who will get the new benefit package provided by this new scheme.

For example the introduction of nominating Co-habiting Partners will not apply to anyone already on pension at 1^st April 2008.

Residual benefits on Death of a Retired Member

From time to time we get asked by our pensioners what happens to their pension when they die or as one pensioner put it ‘Cross the Bar’. 
Can we provide some general information as to what their surviving partner would receive?

With the passing of time, the Local Government Pension Scheme has changed several times over the years, so it is not easy to put out a simple statement as to what percentage or proportion, if any, of your pension, your partner might receive as a pension. This is also the case when determining whether or not there is any residual death grant payable when a pensioner dies.

Each pensioner is covered by the legislation relevant at the time of their retirement.

It is therefore safer for you to get an individual assessment by contacting the pension section so that wrong assumptions are not given out.

Don’t forget you can complete a death grant ‘Expression of Wish’ form to indicate who you would like any death grant to be paid to. Please note the final decision rests with Bath and North East Somerset as administering authority.

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Pension Pay Dates For 2007/08

Your April 2008 Pensions Incr ease

This year’s pensions increase has been confirmed at 3.9%, which is payable from 7th April 2008. The rate of increase is set each year by Central Government and reflects the increase in the Retail Price Index over the 12 months to September 2007. As the increase applies from 7th April, you will, receive 6 days pension at your previous rate and 24 days at the new rate in April. You will receive the full increase in your May pension. You will receive this increase if you are:

• Aged 55 or over,

• Receiving a widow’s, widower’s, civil partner’s or child’s pension, or

• Retired on ill health grounds.

If you do not fall into one of these groups, your pension will not attract this increase until your 55th birthday. Once you reach age 55, we will write to inform you of your new rate of pension.

Will I receive a full increase?

How is my pension increased?

Increases before State Pension Age (SPA)

Up to SPA, all your pensions increase will be paid by the Avon Pension Fund.

Increases after State Pension Age (SPA)

When you attain your SPA, all your pension will increase each April, however part of the increase will be paid by the Avon Pension Fund and any balance will be paid with your State Pension. This relates to the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) earned prior to 1997 whilst you were a member of the Avon Pension Fund .

What is a GMP?

In 1978 the Government introduced the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS), now known as the State Second Pension. Since 1978, members of the Avon Pension Fund have been ‘contracted out’ of SERPS. This means the Avon Pension Fund agree to pay you a pension at least equal to the Guaranteed Minimum Pension at state pension age. This is broadly equivalent to the amount you would have received from SERPS.

You may have a GMP once you reach State Pension Age (SPA) if you were:

A member of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) with pensionable service between the 6th April 1978 and 5th April 1997 or transferred in service from a scheme that was contracted out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme. A widow, widower, or a civil registered partner of a member who had pension service between 6th April 1978 and 5th April 1997 .

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Age Concern

Age Concern’s website has recently been redesigned for easier access and use.

You can find it at www.ageconcern.org.uk. There is a huge amount of information available including fact sheets on issues that affect pensioners in the UK and which can be downloaded freely. These cover topics such as housing, heating, health, tax and finances, transport, benefits and legal matters. There are also fact sheets on making a will, dealing with someone’s estate and arranging a funeral, plus a leaflet entitled ‘Instructions For My Next-Of-Kin And Executors Upon My Death’.

If you cannot find what you want on the website or if you cannot get access to the internet, there is an information line available to pensioners and their relatives and friends, through which you can obtain any of the fact sheets or ask any other questions you may have. 
You can call free on 0800 00 99 66, and the lines are staffed from 7am to 7pm seven days a week. Alternatively, you can write to: Age Concern, FREEPOST (SWB 30375), Ashburton, Devon TQ13 7ZZ.  

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National Fraud Initiative

Avon Pension Fund is administered by Bath & North East Somerset Council. The council is required under section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to participate in the National Fraud initiative (NFI) data matching exercise. Payroll data held, will be provided to the Audit Commission for NFI and will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for the prevention and detection of fraud.

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Are we cost efficient in paying your pension?

The Avon Pension Fund’s costs for paying pensions, is one of the very lowest in the country. Based on benchmarked national figures the annual cost per Fund member for the Avon Pension Fund is £5.07 compared to the average local authority fund of £16.47- a massive 70% lower. 
This is due economies of scale as we are the 12^th largest Local Authority Fund in the UK; changes to cheaper payment software; electronic payments -  under 1% of pensioners are paid by cheque and the conscious decision to reduce the frequency of sending printed payslips every month. 

Which of course contributes to reducing the Fund’s carbon footprint which has to be a good thing!

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“WELL WHAT DID YOU EXPECT…..??”

Just over 18 months ago we decided to ask pensioners who retired during the last 12 months, what they thought of the service they received from us on processing their retirement benefits the clarity and conciseness of our service and whether they had received their retirement benefits on time.

The following table shows the very positive feedback which we received from retirees in that period:

  The results in this table are based on approximately 500 participants.

  Our Pension Manager Steve McMillan says.

“We are of course delighted that our service has received such a high rating but we will nevertheless still strive to improve on this!

We will continue to canvas all retiring members three months after their retirement, and report feedback in future issues.”

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Lifestyle: Get social networking

Your PC could hold the key to an exciting new ‘virtual’ social life, thanks to the many

social networking opportunities available on the internet.

‘Social networks’ are places online where communities of like-minded people with similar interests can meet and communicate via the web or text.  
Most services are web based and offer different ways for users to interact, from visiting and commenting on personalised web pages or emailing/ texting to sharing files, pictures or videos. 

Such sites are part of a new internet revolution where users generate online content. They are usually free to join and, once a member, you can create your own personal profile pages containing anything from favourite music or pictures to graphics and video clips. Once your page goes live, others can visit, comment on your page, leave virtual calling cards or share pictures or video.

Some social networking sites are used daily by millions of people. The most popular examples in the UK are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo  for social networking, YouTube for exchanging video clips and Friends Reunited for helping people locate others. In addition, Twitter lets you tell your network quickly what you’re doing right now, and Flickr is a popular photo sharing website.

Although some sites are designed for young people, older generations are taking part too. 18 per cent of people aged 55 and over visit social networking sites at least once a month. There are high profile older users too. ‘Geriatric1927’ is an 81 year old British widower from Leicester. 
Starting in August 2006 he posted a series of autobiographical videos to YouTube that endeared him to the online community and made him quickly one of its most popular contributors. Now through his new website - www.askgeriatric.com - he is appealing to all older people to embrace technology and the benefits it brings.

Last year a MySpace group took the charts by storm with a new version of The Who’s song My Generation. The Zimmers are a collection of 40 retired people brought together to highlight issues facing older people in the UK. They have travelled the world and have over 5,000 virtual ‘friends’ 
on their MySpace page, from Lulu to Lou Reed.

Sites are also currently springing up for ‘silver surfers’. In October 2007, for example, Saga (the travel and insurance company) launched its own social networking site for the over-50s called Saga Zone. Within a month of launch it already had more than 13,000 registered users, the oldest of which was 87.

So how do you start social networking? First choose your site.

Spend some time finding the right forum for your online persona. If you are handy with a video or webcam, you might want to focus on YouTube.

Or you might simply want to find a forum for people with a similar hobby (in which case just Google for ‘social networking’ plus your area of  special interest).

Then observe how others do it. Netiquette assumes that you watch and learn rather than jump in feet first. There are always useful help pages and  FAQs in the admin areas of most social networks to help you through.

And finally protect yourself against identity theft or online fraud and avoid revealing too much information about yourself.

Definite no-no's are divulging your birth date, address, full contact details or any financial information. However as long as you take sensible precautions like this, you could soon be enjoying a whole new social scene from the comfort of your own living room!

For more information, see www.YouTube.com, www.flikr.com, www.wanobe.com, www.sagazone.co.uk, www.myspace.com,
www.facebook.com, www.friendsreunited.co.uk, www.twitter.com, www.bebo.com

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Health: Sleep yourself slim

Want to lose weight this year? Hit the sack!

Did you know that study after study shows a link between obesity and lack of sleep? The reason is simple. Deprive yourself of sleep and you stress your physical state, play havoc with your hormones and fool your body into thinking it is in danger. This starts a series of reactions that mean you could overeat and perhaps have trouble getting rid of the excess weight too.

Hormones alter

Neil Shah of The Stress Management Society (www.stress.org.uk) says: “A sleep deprived body produces more cortisol, the stress hormone that prepares us to cope with stressful situations.Cortisol helps regulate appetite to ensure you have enough fuel on board for “fight-or-flight” scenarios. 
However, when you don’t get enough sleep and cortisol production is high, it could mean you continue to feel hungry even if you eat enough.” 

“Other hormones influencing appetite are leptin (which gives a feeling of satiety or fullness after eating) and grelin (which stimulates appetite). Poor levels of sleep can alter their levels in your body too. In one study just two successive nights of four hours sleep was enough to do so. 
Typically those taking part saw an 18% decrease in leptin so they had trouble knowing when to stop eating the next day, and a 28% increase in  grelin which meant they felt more hungry. They also had a 24% increase in appetite, craved sweet starchy and salty foods and lost interest in fruit, vegetables, protein and dairy products.”

High glucose

“Additionally, those deprived of sleep can have trouble processing carbohydrates and end up with high blood levels of glucose. In turn this can cause overproduction of insulin which can prompt the body to lay down supplies of fat. It can even lead to insulin resistance, a critical feature of adult-onset diabetes.”

“Good sleep isn’t just about quantity. Quality is important too. Try to get by on less restorative deep or slow-wave sleep and you could inadvertently reduce your body’s levels of growth hormone, a protein that helps regulate the body’s proportions of fat and muscle during adulthood.”

However there is some good news. If you change your sleep habits and get enough good quality rest, your hormone levels can go back to normal  relatively soon.

Make a change

How much sleep is enough? Everyone is different, but most adults need 7 to 9 hours every night. Neil Shah suggests working out what’s right for you through trial and error. “Try going to bed at the same, reasonable hour for a week, but don’t set an alarm clock to wake you up. See how long your body needs before you awaken naturally. If you are particularly sleep deprived, it might take a few days to get back to a normal pattern. But make a note of what time you get up every day so you can start to see the pattern when it emerges.”

Top sleep tips

• Don’t eat a big meal just before bedtime.

• Exercise regularly but do so at least three hours before bedtime.

• Set the scene for sleep with a regular warm bath or 10 minutes reading before bed. Make your bedroom as dark and quiet as possible.

• If you can’t sleep, get up and do something relaxing until you start to feel tired.

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Shoot the puppy?

Corporate English is full of jargon, and more is added every day. Here are some unusual recent offerings, according to Tony Thorne, Head of the Language Centre at King's College, London in his book Shoot the Puppy.

Knife-and-fork it – To deal with something one bit at a time, as in “We’ll have to knife-and fork this problem”.

Vanillacide – how radical concepts are destroyed by over-consultation. This term is a mix between suicide/homicide, and the slang term vanilla meaning insipid.

A Bernie – the sum of one million pounds. Inspired by Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone’s controversial attempt to donate £ 1m to New Labour. As in “That private deal netted him at least a Bernie”.

Kicking dead whales down the beach – performing a deeply unpleasant, seemingly endless, but often essential task. Probably first coined by put-upon technicians in America ’s Silicon Valley wishing they were on the beach instead. This doesn’t refer to a completely impossible, futile or solitary task (instead try ‘pushing rocks uphill’ or ‘nailing jelly to a tree’). But it does refer to an act that many people have to join in with and that leaves them soiled and exhausted.

Shoot the puppy – to dare to do the unthinkable, a few steps beyond ‘biting the bullet’ and ‘grasping the nettle’ it is often used negatively as in “Recommend cutbacks? I’m not the one to shoot the puppy here. Hire a consultant to do that instead.” It originates from US TV producer Chuck Barris who used to wonder how far the public would go when tempted by greed or fame – for example would they shoot a puppy just to get on TV?

Shoot the Puppy is published by Penguin Books.

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Money: Want to cut your water bill?

You can’t get away from bills; but you could end up paying less

Take water, for example. Generally speaking, if there are more bedrooms in your house than people, you could be better off with a water meter rather than sticking with a traditional monthly fixed bill. In fact savings could total hundreds of pounds every year.

Compare rates

Seven out of ten households in the UK receive traditional water bills. If yours is one of them, each year you are paying a fixed amount which is worked out according to the ‘rateable value’ of your home. The other 30% of households have meters, either through choice or because they have high non-essential usage, such as owning a swimming pool. Meters give you a bill based on what water you actually use and what the water company thinks you return to the sewerage system.

Bills vary by region, but the average un-metered bill in England and Wales is £346 compared to just £299 for a metered one. So, how can you tell if you’d be better off with a meter? To see for certain you could try an online comparison site, such as www.uswitch.com, which will ask you about your useage, for example how many showers or baths your household might take, or how often the washing machine runs a cycle each week. With this information, the system can show you immediately if a meter would cut your bills.

Or if you don’t have internet access you could ask your water company for its ‘water meter calculator’ 
which will also help you work out savings.

Keep costs down

If you decide a water meter is the way to go and it’s practical for your supplier to fit one, it will do so free of charge. However, it may refuse those living in flats where water pipes are shared and individual usage is hard to ascertain. In this case, ask for an “assessed charge bill” and your charge will be worked out based on how many people live in your flat, rather than the rateable value of your flat.

Some metered households can cap their bills under the Watersure scheme if someone in the household receives benefit and there’s high water usage because of a medical condition. In such cases, the annual bill can be adjusted to reflect the average bill for that water company. Ask your provider for details.

Part of your water bill is for sewerage

(the supplier assumes that you will return 95% of what you use to the system, so charges for taking it away again). However, if you are on a meter and can prove that you have not poured the water back down the drain, then you could be eligible for a reduction in sewerage rates. 
This might apply if you have a pond or pool to fill or a large lawn to water.

Changed your mind?

If your property already has a meter you can’t change back to a traditional bill. However if you request to install a meter you have more freedom. You can change back to a traditional bill – as long as you do so within 12 months of requesting your water meter.

Therefore switching to a meter could be lower risk than you thought. Adapted from 
www. moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/cut-water-bills.

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Making Contact

If you have any queries, need advice on your pension, or wish to contact us for any other reason please write to:

Avon Pension Fund
Floor 3 South
Riverside , Temple Street
Keynsham
BS31 1LA

or call freephone: 0800 0644155

email: avon_pension@bathnes.gov.uk

at ease is published for Avon Pension Fund by Evolve.

Evolve 
91 - 97 High Road Ickenham 
Uxbridge 
Middlesex 
UB10 8LB 
email: richard.g@evolve-print.com 
website: www.evolve-print.com

atease is published for Avon Pension Fund by Evolve. The Lifestyle, Health and Money articles inside are written by and are copyright of Evolve. Neither the publishers nor the Avon Pension Fund can accept responsibility for the views of this newsletter’s contributions and, although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the contents, readers are advised to take appropriate professional advice before acting on the information or advice in these pages. 

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