A message from the Chair

To begin, I’d like to thank Paul Spencer CBE, who stepped down from the Trustee Board last year, having served as a Trustee Director since 2011. Paul made an enormous contribution at a time of great change for our Scheme and we are grateful for his insight and counsel.

At the time of writing, we are cautiously emerging from lockdown and as I look back over the past 12 months the impact of the pandemic looms large.

As Trustees, our priority is to ensure that members receive their benefits as they fall due. I’m proud to say that despite the challenging circumstances, we’ve remained fully operational throughout — continuing to pay benefits and handling your queries with minimal disruption.

From an investment perspective it’s important to remember that because we are a ‘defined benefit’ scheme, the value of the regular pension paid to those members receiving their benefits is not affected by market turbulence.

Improving our service

In the two years since we brought our administration in-house, our regular member surveys show that we’re improving in all areas.

Reading through the survey findings from the start of this year, there is a clear improvement in service quality and evidence that last July’s decision to bring our contact centre in-house in Chesterfield has been extremely well received.

I’m very grateful to those of you who shared their feedback and to those who volunteered to be part of our new member panel. Your input is invaluable and benefits all members.

Whilst we’ve made significant progress, there is more we want to do particularly in relation to our online services and member communications.

Investing in technology

In the new year, we will be launching a new Scheme website and online service with a fresh new look. More information about this can be found here. I hope you find it much clearer, cleaner and easier to navigate.

Going green

We send a paper copy of this Newsletter every year, to all our members — that’s nearly 300,000 paper copies. We know that many of you would be happy to view the Newsletter online on our website.

If you’d be happy to receive a digital Newsletter instead of a paper copy next year, please email us at goinggreen@btps.co.uk with just your Unique Pension Reference Number, and we’ll be able to give you the option to receive a digital copy next year.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank my fellow Trustees and the wider executive team for their hard work in what has been, to say the least, an eventful year, and for their support in my first year as Chair.