New Capita-run Civil Service Pension Scheme - problems (what a surprise!)

Watching_The_Wheels

So I’m officially a ‘Pensioner’ now that the portal is back up, even got payslips in there. Nothing else changed and of course no progress or acknowledgment regarding my missing WPS contribution refund.

indiasign

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105469#Comment_82105469

I agree with this - I didn’t particularly NEED the loan, but taking it meant I didn’t have to faff on shifting my own savings around, and can leave it gathering interest for a little longer.

Plus my employer (MoJ) was incredibly quick in paying it out - applied Sunday afternoon, approved Monday afternoon, money in my bank account by Wednesday.

jamesh8

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105481#Comment_82105481

Thanks for flagging. Just checked, and I’m now showing as a Pensioner too (no longer as a deferred member), and I have my payslip in there also.

horsewithnoname

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105871#Comment_82105871

exactly. Why lose out if you don’t have to 🤷🏻‍♀️

hedgehogdaisy1

I'm also now officially a pensioner on the portal having retired in February.

My pension has now been adjusted to apply the April 26 inflation rise.

Does anyone know when we will receive the interest payments for late payment of lump sums and pension?

hugheskevi

Does anyone know when we will receive the interest payments for late payment of lump sums and pension?

There has been no date even suggested as yet by either Capita or the Cabinet Office.

I think it will be one of the last things to get done, as there would be a lot of criticism if some members were to get paid interest whilst some were still waiting to receive any pension at all. I can't see any payments of interest starting until at least October based on the current timeline, but probably later than that.

There will be a desire to get it all paid by the end of the tax year though, as well as sorting all the arrears, etc, to avoid tax complications and reduce future workload - although as folks usually move down a tax band on retirement if they change band, it isn't as necessary to get it sorted in the same tax year compared to some other corrections. So I think the best that can be speculated at present would be some point between October and March, but it could easily be later than that.

An update on 2015 Remedy is due in September, and that might well provide more information about the plans for the outstanding work in other areas, such as interest payments.

NewtsInThePond

Here is the link to Taskforce Update #15 from Richard Vianello which was published today on the CSP Website.

Member Knowledge Article

hugheskevi

A few interesting points in the update:

• It is acknowledged that Annual Benefit Statement issuance will only start next week, with the statutory deadline for statements to be issued being 31st August. Given the Bank Holiday, Friday 28th August is the last working day to issue statements within the statutory deadline. It is acknowledged that some will be late. I suspect that with around 600,000 statements to produce and issue, quite a large volume will be late, given issuance is only commencing in the final week before the statutory deadline. MyCSP started issuance months before the deadline, with different employers in different tranches. There has also been a failure to get monthly data interfaces working, so the ABS figures are being taken from a one-off interface from employers, which has to significantly increase the risk of issues and errors.
• The new case figures are going to be produced in a consistent format going forward, which is very welcome. However, they do not include overdue retirement quotes, which I find very odd, given this is such a key category, and there are around 17,000 retirement quotes in progress (it is unclear how many of these are outstanding 100+ days since they were requested, rather than just being business-as-usual within normal timeframes).
• Divorce and transfer cases are also not included - these are some of the most complex cases, so it is a shame that they are not included for completeness.
• On the face of the numbers, the backlog is small, with only around 1,200 cases being actionable that are 100+ days from the date of original member contact. However, I think once all work items are included, this figure would be much higher, especially if all the deprioritised casework outside these categories (eg queries that have gone unactioned and are just showing as 'in progress' in the member portal) were to be included.

Updating my tracking tables:

Caseload backlog, August 2026 (estimated)

	Total	In progress	Awaiting 3rd party input
Cases over 100 days since origination
Death-in-service	287	45	242
Ill health retirements	18	6	12
Bereavement	1,861	1,082	779
Arrears and pension into payment*	335	68	267
Sub total	2,501	1,201	1,300
Other cases (all cases, not only those beyond 100 days)
Divorce (existing cases)	1,400	800	600
2015 Remedy	400	Was due by end June - to have implemented at least 400 of the Immediate Choice elections received but not yet implemented from the statements sent out between January and March 2025 (commitment made by Capita at 26th March Public Accounts Committee hearing [see Q233]
Retirement quotes	17,014	Around 1,300 are complex.
Transfers	n/a	Delays to transfer quotes due to backlog.
Combined total	23,816

• some members report that although arrears have been paid, 2026 Pension Increase has not been included, so a further arrears payment will be due. It is unclear whether these members are included in the figures in this row

Other deliverables

Reduce telephone answering time	9 minutes across all cases, longer for non-priority calls (Cabinet Office said 3-4 minutes, Capita say 8m 47s)
Parliamentary raised cases	1,900 - managed by daily virtual surgeries. Many MPs reporting these surgeries are ineffective.
Portal updates	Angela MacDonald confirmed on 8th July that a further update is due. Capita previously said that only 1% of members don't have access, but many were still reporting lost access (username or password suddenly unrecognised and can't be reset). Many report no answer to queries submitted through portal. Track My Case is extremely basic and only shows whether a case is open or closed. Uploading of documents is problematic (only one at a time, or limited size of document, or unable to upload anything at all).
Pre 2025 Annual Benefit Statements	Were due to be put in the member portal, overdue, no recent updates
Retirement modeller	Due mid-October
Recovery of interest free loans	Mostly Departmental led

Forthcoming deadlines

31st August	Capita revised deadline to produce quotes for past retirements and bereavement cases (straightforward cases)
31st August	Statutory deadline for combined ABS/RSS annual statements to active members. Will start to be loaded to portal in w/c 24th August, but some will be late.
1st September	All pensions relating to the quotes issued by end June put into payment and arrears paid where member responded promptly
Early September	All bereavement cases to be cleared
September	Update due about 2015 Remedy / McCloud
30th September	More complicated cases back to service delivery agreement levels, aside from about 600 of the most complicated cases
6th October	Statutory deadline for Pension Saving Statements to be issued
31st October	Deadline for Pension Dashboard connection
Unspecified	Implement new actuarial factors based on new SCAPE discount rate of CPI+2% (not all factors produced by the Govt Actuary's Dept yet so no timeline). This will enable all transfers and divorce processing to resume.
Unspecified	Interest payments made for late payments
Unspecified	Individual claims for loss to be set up at a later date
6th April 2027	Implement Inheritance Tax changes
Mid 2027	Complete delivery of McCloud / 2015 Remedy - Immediate Choice Remedy Saving Statements all issued (and presumably remaining deferred members RSS), as well as things like Contingent Decisions, EPA compensation, etc

NewtsInThePond

As usual @hugheskevi you compose the information in a very understandable manner 😍 so I thank you for taking the time to do that for us all, as it is extremely helpful.

I can't help notice with a smile on my face, the times that both Cabinet Office and Capita think is happening in terms of the telephone answering times…I was on hold for precisely 1h 38 minutes today before I spoke to a human being!!!

Reduce telephone answering time	9 minutes across all cases, longer for non-priority calls (Cabinet Office said 3-4 minutes, Capita say 8m 47s)

Happy days though 😃…feels like my request is slowly chugging through the system but no details could be provided by the call handler when my "finalisation" letter will arrive! It is a waiting game for me now!🙄

Just for timeline context for anyone else reading this in case it is useful to know: My request to access my Classic pension was submitted on 1 October 2025; my partial retirement commenced on 1 April 2026; quote details received from Capita 25 June; two lots of quote related documentation returned to Capita on 2 and 6 July 2026. The reason I called today was that their web site states it takes 4-5 weeks to process the returned form paperwork and I just wanted reassurance before the time went on too long that they actually had my paperwork and I wasnt going to get another letter requesting something else! At least the call hander could confirm two things - all the documentation I had sent in had been received and anything else that needed doing was "in their hands".

hugheskevi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82110805#Comment_82110805

The telephone waiting time stats haven't been updated since the last Public Accounts Committee meeting on 8th July, so things will have changed in the last 6 weeks, especially during the holiday season. They did improve previously, only to then deteriorate again. I fear the forthcoming Annual Benefit Statement delays combined with members trying to progress their issues after giving up over the summer might result in more member contacts with consequent deterioration in telephone answer time. We shall see.

I was a little surprised the Committee didn't explore the discrepancies in the evidence presented by Capita and the Cabinet Office at the meeting, though.

It seems many of the answers to calls and online chat queries are only to confirm the issue is on the system, but that nothing is available about when anything might be done about it. The new query is then recorded as a new case that has been resolved by providing that rather unhelpful answer. It isn't a bad strategy - Capita can get a fast call response time by answering quickly, get rid of the call quickly (rather than fixing the issue raised), and in the process, get a query raised and fixed recorded to presumably make some of the reported stats look far better than they are.

A key part of good administration is trying to maximise the 'once and done' statistics, ie, how many queries can be fully dealt with in a single contact. So when I see things like the above, I am very suspicious about activities done primarily to massage the stats, rather than being based on delivery principles.