Guidance

Countdown Bulletin 55 - July 2021

Published 26 July 2021

Closure of Scheme Cessation and Scheme Reconciliation eRooms

HMRC has reviewed the need for some of the eRooms on the Shared Workspace Service.

We created these eRooms to help scheme administrators reconcile their scheme memberships. Now that the Scheme Reconciliation service has ended, there is no need to retain these eRooms.

We will start to close these eRooms from 1 September 2021, beginning with the eRooms created for the reconciliation of ceased schemes. These rooms can be identified by the deployment number PSN0010091 at the beginning of the eRoom name.

We will then close the Scheme Reconciliation Service eRooms, which can be identified by the deployment number PSN0040259 at the beginning of the eRoom name.

You should now check the data held in these eRooms and make copies of any information that you need for the ongoing administration of your schemes.

You will not be able to request copies of this data from HMRC after the closure of the eRooms.

These closures will not affect the rooms set up for raising Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) checker queries. There will be no change to the services provided through those eRooms.

Final Data Cuts

If you were appointed administrator of a pension scheme before 31 July 2020 and you have not received its final data cut, you have until 31 July 2021 to request the final data cut for your scheme. You should contact the Customer Relationship Team by email at CRM.schemereconciliationservice@hmrc.gov.uk for help.

HMRC will only publish final data cuts for:

• schemes that engaged with the Scheme Reconciliation Service
• ceased schemes with an ongoing file in the Scheme Cessation area in April 2018

Raising queries with HMRC

Guaranteed Minimum Pension checker

If you have any queries about Guaranteed Minimum Pension, you can submit them to HMRC using the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) checker. You should only submit a query to HMRC using this service if a ‘life event’ is occurring for one of your pension scheme members. An example of a life event might be:

• leaving a scheme
• transferring from a scheme
• reaching Guaranteed Minimum Pension payable age or payable date
• reaching State Pension age
• divorce
• death

Other enquiries

If you have another query that fits within the high level descriptions of HMRC’s service listed in Countdown Bulletin 49, but is not appropriate to the Guaranteed Minimum Pension Checker, you can send it by email to our Customer Relationship Team at CRM.schemereconciliationservice@hmrc.gov.uk. Please explain in your email how your query fits in with HMRC’s service.

You can also send general queries about the Scheme Reconciliation Service to the Customer Relationship Team. We’ll try to respond to all general enquiries within 15 working days.

You can contact the National Insurance: general enquiries telephone helpline for any queries about contracted-out pensions.

More information

You can find more information in earlier editions of the countdown bulletins for pension scheme administrators.