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

Mikalis

My wife retired on 13th Jan 2026, her employer had informed MyCSP in mid Sept 2025. She heard nothing until receiving an inaccurate quote in June 2026, with no workings or any explanation of how the figure was arrived at.

She challenged the quote and received a revised quote on Sept 24th 2026. The revised quote looked accurate, again no explanation or workings, so impossible to be sure that it is 100% correct. She accepted the quote, filled in the relevant forms, with proof of identity, the scanned documents were sent to Capita.

The progress up to Sept 24th was only achieved with the assistance of her employer, who has some success in contacting Capita, whereas my wife's attempts to make any headway end up going nowhere.

Today, 12th October she received the following message from her employer.

I’ve just called Civil Service Pensions to check they had received your forms. The customer services adviser let me know they were unable to open a few of the attachments, and they could only see your bank statement. They advised that you should also send the forms and supporting documentation through the post via recorded delivery as a backup, as there have been issues with their portal and viewing attachments recently.

I know it is a bit of pain but if you’re able to send them in the post then that would ensure the admin team receive the forms, scan them in and attach them to your account. The payments team will then be able to pick this up. The person on the phone advised that CSP that they do not to tell members if files can’t be opened, so I assume you would be left waiting until you rang up to check on your payments!

So the all singing, all dancing Portal with enhanced functionality (or so we were promised) can't cope with a few basic attachments

WorryPot

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82166326#Comment_82166326

So, your wife uploaded her documents onto the 'Capita' designed system > Then 'Capita' staff can't open several of the forms at their end > Then 'Capita' staff will neither contact your wife, nor record the problem in her customer visible portal account > If your wife tries to phone 'Capita' to check, she will have to wait on the phone for at least an hour > In the meantime 'Capita' can put your wife's case into the 'non-workable' pile......so it is not their fault??

The Cabinet Office do not want your wife to contact them directly for help > They advise everyone to log a call on the 'Capita' designed portal, which will be totally ignored.

Good luck.

WorryPot

There are three very interesting 'Correspondence' documents, dated 12th October 2026, added to the Parliament site.

It includes a letter from Capita where they declare that they have met their September target. They did not mention that they can also leap a talk building with a single bound.

Suzycoll

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82166326#Comment_82166326

Oh dear ! You literally couldn't make it up!

A point to note - if papwr copies of ** are posted, they still have to be scanned (presumably) onto Capitas portal ??

How does one know that Capita agents will be able to read them them ??

Weird 🫣

LHW99

How does one know that Capita agents will be able to read them them ??

One hopes they have not had to resort to employing infants 🤨

hugheskevi

It is important with these updates to remember what the self-imposed targets include and what they do not cover.

There is much discussion above about the completeness and accuracy of the categories within the 'Cases over 100 days since origination' being reported, and also the recording of cases within them. However, they additionally exclude a number of areas such as divorce, transfers, and exit quotes. A fuller picture is set out below, with everything below updated with all the latest updates published recently.

Caseload backlog, October 2026 (estimated)

	Total	Workable	Awaiting 3rd party input
Cases over 100 days since origination
Death-in-service	332	39	293
Ill health retirements	8	0	8
Bereavement	1,311	262	1,049
Arrears and pension into payment*	277	89	188
Retirement quotes	240	These cases were in a backlog of 4,000 at the end of June and still not processed in mid September. Presumably more have entered the backlog. Capita claim to issue quotes within 6 weeks. Errors being reported on public forums, eg both McCloud options being identical.
Sub total	2,168	390	1,538
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]
Annual Benefit Statements	53,000	498,000 (86%) were issued to statutory deadline, but errors are being reported on public forums. Remaining ABS are being issued by end of October.
Transfers	n/a	Delays reported on scheme website calculators page for transfer quotes due to backlog.
Pension Saving Statements	n/a	Failure to issue some requested statements, due to not actioning Contact Us requests via portal.
Exit and redundancy quotes to employers	n/a	Capita supply initial and final quotes for paid exits and redundancies, and there are reports of these being significantly behind schedule
Combined total	59,136

The focus on the self-selected 5 case categories excludes a number of other delivery areas with overdue deliverables. One area in which Capita has been successful is in directing attention toward areas they want attention to be directed, with most of the categories below not having had updates published for many months, and some not even having questions or follow-up answers at the Public Accounts Committee.

Overdue deliverables

Reduce telephone answering time	In July, waiting time was under 10 minutes. Since then periodic significant deterioration is reported on public forums, with waiting times back to an hour or more at some times.
Parliamentary raised cases	1,700 as at September 2026 - managed by daily virtual surgeries. Many MPs reporting these surgeries are ineffective.
Member queries	If raised via portal, the case is commonly shown as In Progress then typically does not progress at all. Most phone queries result in being told Capita is aware of the query, no timetable is available, and if pushed that it will be escalated. Nothing then comes of the escalation. Previous PAC hearings have established an escalated call goes to an escalations manager for a decision about whether it will be escalated. If it is rejected for escalation the member is not informed. If it is escalated it is sent to the relevant processing area to be dealt with as they see fit. It is clear from the PAC and discussion forums that updating members is not something Capita considers should be done, even if the case cannot or will not be progressed as promised.
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). 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, or Capita unable to read uploaded files). On 3rd September improving portal performance was escalated as the highest priority technical issue and ensuring all users can sign in.
Establish regular employer data interface	As at 5 June there was work to implement a long-term solution to restore the loading and processing of monthly interfaces (see EPN 748 on scheme website)
Pre 2025 Annual Benefit Statements	These were due to be put in the member portal, they are long overdue, with no recent updates

There is plenty coming up by the end of October, but very little beyond that. First up should be the retirement modeller, due to be in the Portal by mid-October, so that should be issued by early next week. Although the lack of any recent fanfare about that might suggest it is something else to be delayed and a new deadline issued along with all the other updates.

All the things due out over the next few weeks will hopefully give some indication of what can be expected by when. Things to look out for are below, which I have tidied up a little to try to be in the expected chronological order despite all having the same end-October deadline.

Forthcoming deadlines

Mid October	Retirement modeller due to be added to portal
By end October	Remedial advisor and technical audit to be submitted to Cabinet Office
By end October	Cabinet Office to review Capita performance against 30th September deadline to restore standard contractual levels alongside rectification plan
By end October	Cabinet Office Parliamentary Secretary Sally Jameson to report to Parliament on findings of Govt internal audit agency report into Capita's operational arrangements.
By end October	All late ABS and ABS/RSS to be issued by now
By end October	Deadline for Pension Dashboard connection
Unspecified, but likely end October	Richard Vianello to report on Capita's expected timescales for full restoration of service following Remedial Advisor (Grant Thornton) report. Full Service Level Agreements for the 5 key categories were to have been achieved by 30th September, aside from 600 of the most complicated cases
Unspecified	Interest payments made for late payments. Capita will develop a calculator.
Unspecified	Recovery of interest free loans once overdue cases are resolved and pension paid - this will mostly be Departmental led activity. As at September 2026 there were 4,100 loans.
Unspecified	Individual claims for loss to be set up at a later date
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).
6th April 2027	Implement Inheritance Tax changes affecting all pension arrangements.
To be confirmed, beyond 30 March 2027	Legislative deadline was 31st March 2025 other than for a particular class of member. Cabinet Office decided 56% of members fell into a particular class and extended deadline to March 2027, which will not be met. Work remaining includes Immediate Choice Remedy Saving Statements all issued, remaining deferred members' RSS, and things like Contingent Decisions and EPA compensation.

2015 Remedy

A key thing to look out for around the forthcoming 2015 Remedy update is how detailed it is. It is very concerning that Cat Little's update only speaks about the remaining Immediate Choice Remediable Service Statements. The remaining work is much wider than that, for example, remaining deferred member Remediable Service Statements, EPA refunds, and Contingent Decisions.

It is also worth noting that the update published in mid-October was initially promised for September, and the update now provided simply says Cabinet Office will miss its previously extended deadline, and that another update on this will be published in due course. Hopefully that update provides rather more substance than the late-arriving September update has given.

It seems clear that completing 2015 Remedy work is going to take a very long time, despite all the required legislation to enable 2015 Remedy to be delivered coming into effect from 1 October 2023, now more than 3 years ago. The Court of Appeal judgment that led to the legislation was given in December 2018, so there is now a very real risk that the judgment will not be fully delivered a decade after it was handed down.

ShottsBA

^^^That is a great piece of work and very much appreciated. Unfortunately, it is also thoroughly depressing. Capita and, the increasingly culpable, Cabinet Office aren't fixing this.

My holy grail had been the quote and everything would be tickety boo after that, but the likelihood of it being accurate seems remote.

I'm not sure what else can be done, is something more direct possible...a few volunteers outside Capita's Head Office?

daisy_1571

My query outstanding but 'in progress' since 27 March 26 is now 'resolved'. Apparently some poor b@gg@r was on overtime that night as it was resolved at 23:37 on 9th October.

Would be great cause for celebrations if it actually told you what the resolution was. No emails in inbox, no letter. Complete radio silence except that will be logged on one of their updates.

Beyond furious with the whole lying lot of them

WorryPot

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82167036#Comment_82167036

You may have noticed that there is a message on the CSP home page.

"Track My Case

You may have noticed a change to the status of your case, with it showing as closed or completed this will occur when you have raised multiple requests for the same reason, these cases have been linked together and we can assure you are being worked on".

This Ladies & Gentlemen is a licence to close anything they want and massage the statistics to hide their failure….under the guise that they are just doing a bit of housekeeping.

daisy_1571

I didnt notice that message, the screen i get is very sparse of any information but certainly did not spot that. However mine has been resolved not closed or completed.

Tried phoning to ask what the resolution is. After almost half an hour id only moved from position 19 to 17 so can't afford to hang on any longer as last time I phoned it cost 30quid to get cut off when they closed at 6