{"id":703041,"date":"2026-07-21T08:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T08:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703041\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T08:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T08:30:10","slug":"kent-widow-losing-sleep-over-capita-civil-service-pension-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703041\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent widow losing sleep over Capita civil service pension limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A widow says she owes her children thousands of pounds after a government contractor failed to pay out her husband&#8217;s civil service pension for nine months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former driving examiner Michael Curtis died in November, shortly before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cp9jkdx1gp8o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Capita took over administration<\/a> of the civil service pension scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Catherine Curtis said she had phoned the firm about every two weeks since but was &#8220;getting the same run around&#8221; and was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c1m2mjxz7mmo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">among thousands to experience the delays<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Capita said it was &#8220;working through the backlog as quickly as possible&#8221; while the government said it would eventually &#8220;bring this pension scheme back in-house&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Curtis, of Shoreham in Kent, described her husband as &#8220;a loving, caring, kind, fair man&#8221; who had paid into the pension scheme during his working life, and retired in 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He had died aged 69 after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His wife of 44 years sent off the required forms and documents to claim what she was due from the pension scheme after the bereavement, and was told the following month the scheme&#8217;s administrators had changed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">According to Curtis, she was told it would &#8220;only take a couple of weeks for them to sort it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But no payments have arrived and she now owes money to her children, and has maxed out a credit card &#8220;just to survive&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Sometimes they&#8217;ve done my shopping for me, sometimes they&#8217;ve paid some of my bills for me,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The financial consequences have included falling behind on her rent and fearing eviction, although according to Curtis this has since been resolved with her housing association.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her daughter Elizabeth Greenfield said: &#8220;The thought of my mum being evicted scared all of us and none of us could afford to help.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She told BBC News it was &#8220;crushing to see&#8221; transform from the &#8220;happy, bubbly person&#8221; she was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She used to be willing to go out, go out for a meal, have drinks,&#8221; Greenfield said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She hasn&#8217;t done that since all this happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A widow says she owes her children thousands of pounds after a government contractor failed to pay out&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703041","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=703041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}