The government is aiming to restore most elements of the Civil Service Penson Scheme to the required service levels by June, a Cabinet Office minister has said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little has revealed that the backlog for the scheme has now reached 120,000 cases.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Cabinet Office and Capita apologised for the crisis, which has seen thousands of recently-retired civil servants go without pension payments in recent months, and announced a loan of up \u00a310,000 <\/a>for those experiencing hardship.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking at the end of a Westminster Hall debate on the administration of the pension scheme this morning, Cabinet Office minister Anna Turley said the government expects to restore service levels for death in service cases and ill health retirement cases by the end of February and \u201cmore widely, our current plan is that we’re working to bring most aspects of the service back with expected service levels by June\u201d.<\/p>\n Turley, who noted that she herself has a civil service pension, having begun her career in the Home Office in 2001, said the government \u201cwill keep this under constant review and continue to look for opportunities to accelerate progress\u201d.<\/p>\n The minister\u2019s comments came after a letter from Little to the Public Accounts Committee, published earlier this week, revealed that the work in progress backlog has only got bigger since the outsourcing giant took over the contract in December.<\/p>\n Little, who was in attendance at the Westminster Hall debate alongside HM Revenues and Customs deputy perm sec Angela MacDonald, who is leading a taskforce helping to tackle\u00a0the backlog<\/a>,\u00a0said in the letter: \u201cThe size of the work in progress (WIP) backlog (including the circa 90,000 cases inherited from the previous administrator), is now estimated at around 120,000 cases.<\/p>\n \u201cCapita\u2019s inability to process these cases at sufficient pace and volume has meant that some members have experienced hardship through non-payment of pensions due. This is not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Cabinet Office said Capita had inherited a backlog of 86,000 cases compared to an expected handover of 37,000 cases from MyCSP when the contract with Capita was signed in November 2023.<\/p>\n In her letter, Little outlined a number of factors ahead of the transition that led to the current crisis, including Capita\u2019s failures to meet milestone deadlines during the two-year transition period, and issues with MyCSP\u2019s performance, as flagged by the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee last year.<\/p>\n