HR and Payroll Bulletin - February 2024

Teachers Pensions 

Following the upgrade to Oracle Fusion, Teacher Pensions contributions have continued to be deducted from salary payments and paid over to TP each month.

There remains the current reporting issue preventing TP from allocating the contributions to the appropriate teachers' record. We are aware that this causes concern among our teacher colleagues and continue to address cases on an individual basis in retirement cases.

Please be assured that this issue remains a very high priority and work is due to commence imminently on a solution and we will advise once ready for deployment.

Due to the ongoing issues with the reporting of service information to Teachers' Pensions, if any employee requires an update to their service in order to obtain their annual allowance details, please submit a request to payroll-clients@lancashire.gov.uk

Local Government Pensions Scheme (LGPS)

Pension contributions have continued to be deducted from salary payments and paid over to Lancashire Pension Partnership Administration (LPPA). Leavers are reported weekly to LPPA.

Existing LGPS members' service has been reported up to 31 March 2023

Payroll Services is currently working on a reporting solution with Digital Services and LPPA to submit service from April 2023 onwards.

LPPA have access to Oracle Fusion to assist in progressing pension payments and answering employee enquiries.

Pension Point

Members of the Local Government Pension scheme can access Pension Point which is the scheme's member area, here. In the employee area, you can view your service history, transfer history and CARE history as often as you like.

Oracle Fusion – Help/Tips/Reminders – Payroll

We have a payroll-specific area on our website that provides, for example, an overview of how pay is calculated and what deductions you might expect. An example payslip is displayed, explaining what the various pay elements mean.

A comprehensive explanation of payslip entries produced by the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) can be viewed on their website.   

Annual leave and sickness absence - reminder

For further information on annual leave and sickness absence, please refer to the attendance policy and procedure webpage (Intranet Access required).

To record a period of annual leave during sickness absence:

  1. Log into Oracle Fusion.
  2. Click on the Leave/Absence Management folder and select Record Absence/Approve Leave.
  3. Select the employee from within the hierarchy and enter the annual leave dates.
  4. Email the form below to the Payroll Service to confirm the annual leave dates being taken and the details of the employee who has requested the annual leave (including their employee/pay reference number).
  5. Ensure that the employee's sickness absence record remains open and is not updated or closed when submitting the request. Please note that the Payroll Service are unable to action a request until the period of annual leave has been added to Oracle Fusion.

View this document for information on Annual leave whilst on sick leave

Pay claims guidance - reminder 

Employees claiming additional hours need to submit their claim via Oracle Fusion. The line manager will then receive an email alert when a claim has been submitted by a team member and is waiting to be approved. Alternatively, you can submit the claim on their behalf. 

You must thoroughly check each claim before approving.

For guidance on how to submit and approve a claim, please access Oracle Guided Learning (OGL) in Oracle Fusion.

Please refer to payable enhancements (Intranet Access required) for the current rates. 

Claims must be submitted and approved before the payroll deadlines to ensure the additional payments are processed before pay day.

Please note: You cannot submit further overtime/expenses claims if you have claims already submitted and not authorised.

You can view the Overtime and expenses terminology in Oracle Fusion webpage on the Pay claims section of the Intranet. (Intranet access required)

Pay claims after leaving

For employees who have recently left and are no longer visible in a manager's hierarchy, the following form can be used by their manager to submit any outstanding claims:

The Claims after Leaving form can be downloaded by clicking this link. 

Absences - reminder

When an absence is input, you must select submit and not just save, for the action to be processed. 

Please also remember that when an end date is added to an open-ended absence, you must remove the open-ended tick, or it will continue to be processed as an open absence.

Leavers - reminder

Managers are reminded that terminations must be entered into Oracle as soon as the notice of leaving is received and that the correct leaving date and reason are entered to avoid delays with pensions for retirees.

Please don't terminate a record for an employee who is transferring to another LCC position. Recruitment will complete a transfer for this.

When processing a termination, please remember to choose the option "Lancashire County Council" rather than "Schools and academies" (this is for schools only) which, will pull through the correct list of applicable leaving reasons. Please pay particular attention to the retirement reasons available.

Please ensure that the reason for leaving is accurately completed and submitted.

Would managers also ensure that any outstanding payment claims submitted by leavers are actioned before the employee's actual termination date passes, as after this point the transactional data is no longer visible on the notification and the manager is therefore unable to see what they are being asked to approve.

How to report a defect on Oracle Fusion including access issues

Service Requests through Oracle

When a request is raised via the Help Desk on Oracle Fusion, please do not send a separate email to the payroll team concerned, as this duplicates work and delays the response time.

It is not necessary to duplicate requests or enquiries, if you wish to provide an update or wish to check the status of an existing enquiry, please 'update' the original Service Request (SR) on Oracle Fusion.  We kindly ask that you do not privately message or email any individual team member within the AskHR Team or Payroll Services regarding any new enquiry or chasing an existing enquiry, as these will not be responded to.

We would ask that employees speak to their managers in the first instance regarding any HR or Pay related enquiries and that managers and employees do not raise the same query via a SR separately. 

Note to Managers: If managers receive queries from a number of their employees on the same issue, we kindly ask managers not to advise their employees to individually raise a service request but for managers to raise one SR on behalf of their employees in order to receive a response so they can cascade to their employees.

Change to Excess Travel and Training Mileage Rates from 1 December 2023

The council's rate for claiming excess travel and training mileage has changed from 13p to 14p per mile from 1 December 2023, in line with the change in the HMRC minimum advisory fuel rate for a petrol engine car that is effective from this date.

Any mileage claimed in respect of excess travel or training accrued from 1 December 2023 onwards will be paid at the revised 14p rate.  The HMRC review their advisory fuel rates quarterly – on 1 March, 1 June, 1 September and 1 December each year – and we will notify employees of any changes that impact on the council's existing rates as and when these occur.

Payroll Deadlines 2023-24

The complete deadline dates are available on the HR, Pay and Employment section of the Intranet.

Please ensure all processing is completed on time to guarantee changes are made in time for payday.

For information on salary scales visit the Salary Scales webpage on our website.