Cabinet Office minister Sally Jameson has said Capita’s performance in administering the Civil Service Pension Scheme “remains unacceptable” in a statement to the House of Commons.
Providing an update on the pensions crisis, Jameson said Capita’s executive leadership had set itself two targets following its failure to meet its commitment to restore the scheme to contractual levels by the end of June: clear stock cases by 1 September 2026 and process cases within key performance indicators from 30 September 2026.
Jameson said Capita has reported meeting its self-imposed 1 September target across five priority areas – bereavement, death in service, ill health retirement, retirement payments, and retirement quotes – but only for cases it categorises as “workable stock”.
“While this step is noted, meeting a milestone on workable stock alone is not sufficient progress and does not constitute full service recovery,” Jameson said.
“Overall performance remains unacceptable, and far too many scheme members continue to face uncertainty while waiting for their cases to be resolved.”
Jameson said the government “continues to hold Capita firmly to account using all commercial levers available to it” and will also “continue work on actively shaping a long-term strategy to bring this pension scheme back in-house”.
The minister added that she intends to provide the House of Commons with a “substantive update” in October following the conclusion of the technical audit and report being carried out by a remedial adviser.
Last week’s update from Cabinet Office civil service pensions director Richard Vianello included data from Capita which set out cases over 100 days old divided by those that are “workable” or not, as shown in the table below.
Case type over 100 days old
Total number affected
Workable, and to be paid within 15 days
Currently ‘non workable’ and require additional information from a third party
Bereavement
1,069
266
803
Death in Service
308
41
267
Ill health retirements
12
1
11
Payments
288
66
222
The update also revealed the progress Capita had made on clearing the backlog of retirement quotations. Vianello said that, at the end of June, Capita had around 4,000 quotations remaining in the backlog, of which 1,500 were “complex”.
Capita committed to clearing the backlog within six weeks, and 3,087 quotes were issued by the end of August. Vianello said he has asked for an update on the remaining quotes and will share the timescales for clearing these in his next update.
Vianello also noted difficulties members were having signing into the portal to access 2025-26 annual benefit statements. Vianello said Capita chose a shortened timeframe and this had led to a surge in website and member portal traffic and difficulties registering or signing into the member portal and viewing or downloading annual benefit statements. Viannelo said Capita has recognised the issues and improving the portal performance “has been escalated as the highest priority technical issue, and Capita is working urgently to ensure all users can sign in as required”.
Around 498,000 of this year’s annual benefit statements have been loaded onto the member portal, whille a further 78,000 “will be loaded gradually later this month and in October”, he added.
A Capita spokesperson said: “We have met the first milestone set out in our remediation plan for the Civil Service Pension Scheme, known as the Stock Commitment. This covered cases already in the system as of 30 June across five priority areas where we had the information needed to progress them, and we completed that processing work by 1 September.
“We recognise there is more to do to restore the service members should expect. Our focus remains on resolving outstanding cases and delivering against the next milestone in the remediation plan at the end of September.
“We remain sorry for the impact the service issues have had on members and are continuing to work closely with the Cabinet Office as we deliver the wider recovery.”