Correspondence

Civil Service Pension Recovery Plan Update - 16 March 2026

Updated 16 March 2026

Concerted and focused action continues to resolve the service delays affecting Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) members. The Civil Service Pensions Taskforce, in close partnership with its administrator, Capita, is executing an intense recovery plan through a series of targeted sprints. The priority is to restore full service as quickly as possible. While core payroll remains stable for approximately 732,000 existing pensioners, a dedicated specialist team is focused on returning service to a steady state. 

Calls and emails

Call response times continue to track well and emails in the queues have been read and prioritised. 

In the week commencing 2 March 2026, the contact centre achieved an overall answer rate of 99% on two consecutive days (Wednesday, 4 March and Thursday, 5 March). 

65.7% of calls were answered within 30 seconds, with an average wait time of less than four minutes. This is tracking towards the target of 80% of calls answered within 30 seconds, but there is more to be done to ensure that this is maintained.

Priority cases

All existing death-in-service cases were addressed by 28 February 2026 and ill-health retirement cases addressed by 6 March 2026. Service levels in these areas are being maintained. Immediate action continues to be taken if any remaining older cases are highlighted.

Of the 8,063 inherited cases, 6,078 had associated lump sums and these have been paid by 8 March 2026. The focus is now to put the remaining regular monthly pensions into payment.

Any members in hardship continue to be fast tracked. All priority cases (death in service, bereavement, ill-health and financial hardship) are triaged daily and routed for immediate action.

Transition support loans

As a reminder, an existing civil servant who has partially retired or a civil servant who has retired since 1 January 2025, can contact their employer to access the transition support loan which is available. As of 11 March 2026, 647 loans have been dispersed by Civil Service employers.

CSPS members not within the scope of this loans scheme, but who are at risk of experiencing financial hardship due to delayed payment of their pension, should contact Capita and mention the financial impact of these delays. Capita will then prioritise resolution of these cases.

Pension quotations

A number of members who have requested a pension quotation may have questions on how Capita processes their requests. Pension quotation requests are prioritised on the basis of the retirement date and not the date the quotation is requested.  There are currently 20,585 pension quotations being assessed and those still valid will be processed in retirement date order starting with the oldest ones first. Responses to common member queries around pension quotations and changing retirement date are available on the CSPS portal. 

Immediate focus

The current sprint is focused on preparing the system for long-term stability. Additional functionality is being added to the CSPS portal by 31 March 2026. The taskforce aims to return all aspects of the service to standard contractual levels by end June 2026, with the backlog being incrementally reduced leading up to this point.