The Cabinet Office (pictured) has asked HM Revenue & Customs deputy chief executive Angela MacDonald to lead oversight of an urgent recovery plan.
Civil Service chief operating officer Catherine Little and Capita chief executive Adolfo Hernandez have issued a joint statement on the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) – apologising for a string of issues after Capita took over administration of the scheme at the start of December.
In a joint statement issued yesterday (28 January), Little and Hernandez outlined the issues facing the scheme – noting that CSPS members had been reporting difficulty logging into the scheme's portal, incomplete pension details, long waits on customer service calls, and delays to pension quotes and payments.
They said that, in some cases, these issues had caused financial hardship.
The statement said that, when Capita took over administration on 1 December last year, the firm had inherited a backlog of 86,000 cases from the previous administrator – a significant proportion of which were already overdue. It said this led to higher-than-expected volumes of calls and complex queries which created further issues.
Little and Hernandez said: "This is not the service members deserve. Capita and the Cabinet Office are deeply sorry for the worry, frustration and distress this has caused - particularly for those dealing with bereavement or ill health."
The statement said the Cabinet Office has asked HM Revenue & Customs deputy chief executive Angela MacDonald to lead oversight of an urgent recovery plan.
Together, Capita and Cabinet Office have agreed the immediate priority actions:
- Prioritising urgent cases: Bereavements, ill-health retirements and hardship situations are being addressed first.
- Additional resources: A surge team of over 150 additional staff is being deployed to Capita to support clearing the correspondence backlogs and speed up processing, bringing the total workforce to more than 650.
- Support for hardship: The Cabinet Office is working with departments to agree interim support measures for those experiencing financial hardship due to delayed payments.
Capita said it expects to restore service levels for the most urgent cases by the end of February, with full recovery of the remaining priority cases to follow.
In addition to this ongoing activity, Capita is undertaking a distinct project to complete the outstanding work mandated by the McCloud judgement – work that involves issuing benefit choices to approximately 74,000 pensioners and 21,000 deferred members.
The statement said that current civil servants will receive communications from their department about how to access support.
It said members who retired within the past 12 months should contact their former department directly for support and those who left more than 12 months ago, as well as long-deferred members, pensioners or dependants, should raise hardship concerns with Capita.
