Bulletin, 21 April 2022 (Publication Data, Year-end Deadlines, IPSA Online Maintenance, Energy Bills Rebate)

As you know, we paused publication last year while we review our publication policy due to the heightened security risk to MPs. We don't yet have a new date for publication but today we have made the redacted data covering claims from June 2021 to January 2022 available to you for review. Please see below for more details.

We will be making some changes to IPSA Online on 28 April 2022 which may briefly affect your ability to login for up to 30 minutes. See below for more details.

Due to year-end, the deadline for reconciling your payment card lines for March and earlier is 29 April 2022. If your payment card is not reconciled by this date, your card will be suspended and the costs will only be able to be claimed in the current financial year.

Please also remember that all reimbursement claims for 2021-22 that were included on your year-end form must be submitted on IPSA Online by Friday, 13 May 2022.

We will begin to make movements in line with our year-end process and your requests in mid-May.

Publication data

Last year, we suspended bi-monthly claims publication while we waited for security advice from MSSS and the security services.

Our publication date is still to be confirmed, however we would like to make the data we have available for you to check to avoid sudden large increases to your workload.

Please be aware that the redacted description fields in the data may not be released in full if we receive any new security advice.

You can access your data directly by clicking here. This link can also be found on our information website. If you experience any problems accessing your data, please contact us.

We recommend that you check your data before we publish and if you think we have missed anything, please contact us by Wednesday, 1 June.

Scheduled IPSA Online Maintenance

At 17:00 on 28th April 2022, we will be making some changes to IPSA Online logins that will increase security and allow us to develop new services in the future.

Logins to IPSA Online may be affected for up to thirty minutes while we make the change.

On completion, you will notice that the next time you are prompted to login to IPSA Online, the initial login page will display the IPSA login page and not the current Parliamentary Digital Services login page. All other screens will be unaffected.

Your username and password won’t be changed as part of the process, please continue to use them as before.

Year-end Deadlines

There are still some important deadlines to be aware of during the year-end process.

All payment card lines for 2021-22 need to be reconciled by 29 April 2022 for them to be automatically accrued into the last financial year as part of our year-end process.

Any lines still outstanding (unreconciled and in workflow) after 29 April will be allocated to the current financial year (2022-23) if they have completed workflow by the end of May.

Log in here to make sure you are up to date. Guidance on how to reconcile your payment card can be found here.

Any reimbursement claims for 2021-22 that you have included on your year-end form must be submitted on IPSA Online by Friday, 13 May 2022. You can find our year-end guidance here.

We will begin to make movements in line with our year-end process and your requests in mid-May.

Energy Bills Rebate

The Energy Bills Rebate (known as the Council Tax Rebate) is a £150 rebate due to be paid on qualifying properties.

To qualify for the rebate, your home should be your main residence, in the council tax in A-D and be a chargeable dwelling.

If you are in an IPSA funded home which qualifies for the rebate, and you pay by direct debit you may automatically receive the Council Tax Rebate of £150; in these cases the amount should be repaid to IPSA.

If you are in an IPSA funded home which qualifies for the rebate but you do not receive the rebate automatically (for example, because you do not pay be direct debit) you should not apply for this.

The government has provided all councils in England with funding to provide discretionary support to any household that is in financial need, regardless of council tax band. This should not be applicable where council tax and utilities are reclaimed from IPSA.

If you have any queries, please contact us.

IPSA Timetable and Key Dates

As you know, we've been working hard to make sure that working with us to manage your budgets is as easy as possible so you can spend more of your time doing the important work that you do.

To mark the start of the new financial year, our Finance team has created a timetable of key dates to make it easy to see what needs to be done and when. You can access the calendar here.