Home Office<\/a> in November.<\/p>\nThe 60-year-old, who spent 38 years in various government departments, expected a lump sum and payments to begin in December.<\/p>\n
Eckford has been forced to borrow money from family members to meet mortgage payments and other bills in the past few months.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m angry \u2013 but I\u2019m almost beyond being angry\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to be careful over Christmas, but I was still hopeful it would be sorted in January,\u201d he told The i Paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it got to January and the payment was missed again, I thought, \u2018bloody hell\u2019. It got really worrying then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fiasco,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s been very stressful. Yes, I\u2019m angry, but I\u2019m almost beyond being angry, because it\u2019s become so tiresome to phone them [Capita] over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so frustrating to get no clarity and be living in limbo,\u201d he added. \u201cThe uncertainty has been so unhelpful. If you knew the payments would finally come by the end of February, you can start to plan your life again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eckford said he had borrowed enough to \u201cget through the end of February, but that\u2019s it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may have to talk to my mortgage lender then about what my options are.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to have any confidence it\u2019ll be over soon,\u201d he added. \u201cI have zero confidence in Capita being able to clear the backlog by the end of February.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018There is fury, stress and sleepness nights\u2019<\/p>\n
Capita took over the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme \u2013 which manages payments for around 1.7 million former public servants \u2013 from MyCSP in December.<\/p>\n
Capita said it inherited a larger backlog of unresolved pension cases than expected, saying it stood at 86,000 when it took over the contract in December.<\/p>\n
The company said it expects the \u201cmost urgent\u201d cases of hardship to be resolved by the end of February.<\/p>\n
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told MPs last month that the waits of several months faced by some retired civil servants were \u201ccompletely and utterly unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/SEI_271597965.jpg\")
Cabinet minister Nick Thomas-Symonds has said delays are unacceptable (Photo: Chris J. Ratcliffe\/Bloomberg via Getty)<\/p>\n
Sally Tsoukaris, the general secretary at the Civil Service Pensioners Alliance (CSPA), said the campaign group was currently inundated by retired civil servants who had not received payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is absolute fury about it,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople feel let down by the system that they spent their career supporting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people are in desperate situations \u2013 we know of people struggling with mortgage payments, rent and other bills. There\u2019s been a lot of stress and sleepless nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need their pensions to be paid right away, not weeks or months down the line, long after their planned for retirement date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calls for pension compensation scheme<\/p>\n
The PCS union, which represents civil servants, has called for a compensation scheme to cover the interest on any debts accrued, and any other knock-on consequences of the delays in pension payments.<\/p>\n
The CSPA backed the idea. \u201cSadly, we will hear more about the terrible consequences for some people, and I think compensation may be due to some of them,\u201d said Tsoukaris.<\/p>\n
Eckford, who has applied to the Home Office for a hardship loan, said compensation \u201cwould be very welcome \u2013 it\u2019s been a lot of grief, time and energy wasted for a lot of people\u201d.<\/p>\n
But he would be \u201csurprised\u201d if such a scheme is set up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there should be questions for Capita to answer,\u201d the ex-civil servant added. \u201cBut will anyone be held accountable? I doubt it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catherine Little, the Civil Service\u2019s chief operating officer, has said standard hardship loans would be \u00a35,000. Up to \u00a310,000 may be made available in some exceptional cases.<\/p>\n
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: \u201cThe service levels following the move to Capita have been unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
They said an \u201curgent recovery plan\u201d is underway via the interest-free loans being made available to retirees via each Government department.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Capita added: \u201cCapita 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doug Eckford is one of 8,500 recently retired civil servants who have spent months without any pension payments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,26292,1447,4178,4174,4175,4204,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-418023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-home-office","11":"tag-pensioners","12":"tag-pensions","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-retirement","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}