{"id":280589,"date":"2026-02-12T14:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/280589\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T14:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:33:08","slug":"civil-service-pension-backlog-overwhelmed-capita-boss-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/280589\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil service pension backlog &#8216;overwhelmed&#8217; Capita, boss says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve only got a certain amount of money to see me through each week. I should be making memories and enjoying my time with my family, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, my elderly parents, and I can&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some of those affected have had no contact from Capita whatsoever. It took over the administration of the scheme from MyCSP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee, Capita bosses said they were surprised by the extent of the issue the company inherited.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Holroyd said: &#8220;We now own this problem. It is ours to fix and ours to fix at pace.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Apologising for the situation, he said the service was not what retired civil servants deserved. Staffing had increased from 400 at the time of the handover to 750 now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chris Clements, managing director at Capita Public Services, said calls about bereavement and hardship were being answered quickly, but others had &#8220;unacceptable&#8221; waits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said some payments would be made to the most serious cases by the end of February, and they would receive a normal service by the end of March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said anyone who needed to get in touch should use the &#8220;contact us&#8221; tool on the front page of its website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c9d6yxdq3d2o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">emergency interest-free loan system<\/a> has been set up, with newly retired people applying to their former employer, and those who retired more than 12 months ago being directed to apply to Capita.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the scheme has been criticised as placing a further burden on the public purse, and forcing applicants to go through a humiliating process to &#8220;prove&#8221; they are experiencing hardship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;I&#8217;ve only got a certain amount of money to see me through each week. I should be making&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-280589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}