meet the bills<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nDenise and her husband, who was a fraud investigation officer, were looking forward to their retirement and spending more time with each other, family and friends, adding: \u201cWe will never get this time back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple had to put their travel plans on hold, with no clear timeline of when she may be able to retire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have two choices, submit my resignation now and hope that when my pension is due Capita can pay it without delay,\u201d she explained, calling it a \u201cmassive risk\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr I wait until Capita are known to be able to pay pensions on time, and must then give four months\u2019 notice of my resignation resulting in a depressing extension to my working life and loss of precious time with family and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth options are unbearable to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m having sleepless nights\u2019<\/p>\n
Stuart Nicol, 58, from Edinburgh has also felt financially squeezed after retiring last year from working in the Scottish parliament after nearly 24 years.<\/p>\n
In September, Stuart was given a pension quote from MyCSP, which did not have the correct name on it and did not have the correct pension amount quoted.<\/p>\n
He was quoted nearly \u00a32,000 less than what both his payslip and pension benefit statement from last year stated.<\/p>\n
Stuart raised the issue with MyCSP, who told him to still complete and return all the relevant documentation needed to begin processing his pension.<\/p>\n
After submitting these documents, Stuart then began to chase the company for updates but had no luck.<\/p>\n
Once administration switched to Capita, Stuart registered for the pension portal and filled out an online query form, laying out his issues.<\/p>\n
He spent over two hours on the phone to Capita before being told a time frame could not be given for when his pension will be paid.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cMy savings are now almost fully used up and I am fast approaching the stage where I require my pension to meet my mortgage payments and other monthly household bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stuart described the \u201csleepless nights\u201d him and his wife have been having due to a lack of any timeline or communication from Capita.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are having to make financial decisions that are less than favourable, like starting a claim on a different, smaller pension that I had wanted to preserve until I am 60 just to get some income from April this year and having to using offset mortgage savings just to meet household bills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Stuart contacted his local MP who received a response from Capita stating his lump sum would be released today but a timeline for finalising his pension benefits could not be given.<\/p>\n
The email said: \u201cOnce this matter has been resolved, we will contact Stuart directly under separate cover and issue him with a finalisation statement confirming his entitlement within the scheme. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will also ensure that his monthly pension payments are finalised and that any arrears of pension are released.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stuart is feeling a slight sense of relief as the lump sum payment would take the immediate pressure off his financial situation.<\/p>\n
Other former civil servants also cited a lack of clear communication from Capita, with many stating they were never told the pension scheme was to be transferred to a new provider.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only discovered [the switch] when one of my former colleagues decided to retire and tried to access the pension website, only to find that it no longer existed,\u201d a retired civil servant said. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Capita said: \u201cAt the time of contract signature, the volume of work in progress items left by the previous provider was agreed to be 37,000. Once we took over the scheme in December, however, we discovered that the backlog we were inheriting was in fact 86,000. As a result, we have experienced several times the normal volume of member queries since launch.<\/p>\n
\u201cCapita has over 500 full-time employees working to deliver the Civil Service Pension Scheme, an increase of 50 per cent on the previous provider. Since the start of December, payments of over \u00a3747m have been made. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our members.\u201d<\/p>\n
MyCSP has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denise Alton has had to put off travel plans with her husband due to the ‘nightmare’ ordeal Denise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,80178,268,85,46,5898,266,267,688,1003],"class_list":{"0":"post-242202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-civil-service","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-pensions","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance","16":"tag-retirement","17":"tag-state-pension"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}