Draft guidance for administering authorities on connecting to the new pensions dashboards has been published by the LGPS on its website.

As we reported in June, under the Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023 there is now a single connection deadline for all schemes of 31 October 2026.  We are still awaiting the MaPS guidance we were promised “in the Autumn” in relation to earlier staging dates for connecting. 

Nevertheless, as the draft guidance makes clear there is plenty for administering authorities to be doing to prepare in the meantime.

The draft guidance is quite lengthy, running to almost 70 pages, giving some indication of the scale of the task administering authorities are faced with.  Of particular practical value may be the 17 page “preparing to connect” checklist in Appendix 1, which sets out a list of steps and due dates (where the due date is before 31 October 2026, these are flagged to be recommendations only). 

Some of the early actions which it is recommended administering authorities can be taking now include:

• making sure dashboards are a standing agenda item at Pensions Committee and local Pension Board meetings;
• agreeing with AVC providers how data will be cleansed and matched to your records;
• establishing your internal controls register to implement dashboards; and 
• assessing your main scheme view data for accuracy and digital accessibility.

The importance of keeping a clear audit trail throughout in order to evidence how authorities have complied with their pensions dashboards duties, including steps taken to address any issues that arise, is emphasised.

We are very well placed to assist administering authorities in relation to the legal aspects of connecting to the pensions dashboards, including in relation to cyber security and data protection.