The Cabinet Office needs to learn lessons from customer service failings with the Civil Service Pension Scheme over the past 13 years and avoid repeating them with the scheme\u2019s new administrator, the National Audit Office has warned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Complaints about the scheme, which has 1.7 million members, increased by 43% between 2016-17 and 2023-24 \u2013 rising from 3,335 to 4,780 over that period, according to a report from the public spending watchdog.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Current scheme administrator My Civil Service Pension \u2013 MyCSP for short \u2013 has a target of answering at least 80% of customer calls within 30 seconds. However, the NAO said MyCSP had managed to answer barely more than half that proportion of calls promptly enough over the past two years. The watchdog said that in November 2024 MyCSP was taking an average of 24 minutes to answer calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NAO report, published on Monday, says that the Cabinet Office, which has overall responsibility for the Civil Service Pension Scheme, has struggled to hold MyCSP to account when performance has fallen below agreed levels. It said the department recognised that its contract with MyCSP did not always provide \u201csufficient commercial levers\u201d and that it had also been unable to incentivise improvements through its contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MyCSP is a mutual that was spun out of government. It brings together employee partners, who own 25% of the company, and private sector business Equiniti. It has run the Civil Service Pension Scheme since 2012. The NAO said MyCSP had been paid \u00a3238m since 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MyCSP has been hit with penalties on two occasions over the past 13 years. In 2022,\u00a0the Cabinet Office applied a penalty of \u00a319,355 for failure to deliver timely payments of lump sums. The department is also seeking a payment \u00a3228,538 from MyCSP for its failure last year to provide timely retirement quotes and first pension payments to scheme members over a period of several months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the failings highlighted by the NAO, the watchdog acknowledged that MyCSP had reported meeting at least 87% of its \u201ckey service levels\u201d between August 2017 and January 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Outsourcing giant Capita is due to take over the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme from MyCSP in December this year, following a contract award in 2023<\/a>. The firm previously administered the scheme\u2019s pension payroll services and deferred member administration before 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n Its successful bid for the Civil Service Pension Scheme contract was a price of \u00a3239m to run the scheme for seven years \u2013 a figure the NAO said represented savings of \u00a383m for the Cabinet Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the watchdog also noted that Capita had already \u201cmissed three key milestones\u201d for its takeover of the contract, leading to the Cabinet Office withholding \u00a39.6m in transition payments.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a331.7m price tag for McCloud judgment admin\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Elsewhere, the report noted that MyCSP had been able to bill the Cabinet Office for an additional \u00a331.7m for work necessitated by 2015\u2019s botched public sector pensions reforms, in the wake of the Court of Appeal\u2019s 2018 McCloud judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fallout from the reforms being declared illegal on the grounds of discrimination and set aside has seen public sector pension schemes forced to create remedies to ensure affected scheme members are not disadvantaged.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NAO said additional work related to the McCloud \u201cremedy\u201d for Civil Service Pension Scheme members<\/a> had seen the Cabinet Office forced to fund around 100 extra staff and contractors for MyCSP at a \u201cpremium rate\u201d. The cost of the remedy itself was estimated at \u00a319bn in the 2021-22 Whole of Government Accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n NAO head Gareth Davies said it was vital for the Cabinet Office to use the handover in administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme to drive positive change.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCabinet Office must reflect on the lessons learnt from MyCSP\u2019s administration of the scheme, ensuring key performance indicators are monitored and enforced, and that important service improvements are introduced by Capita,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of parliament\u2019s Public Accounts Committee, said the current contract with MyCSP had not supported effective accountability or incentivised service improvements.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unsurprising that members are concerned with the levels of service they have received, given that calls are not answered within expected timeframes and complaints have risen to their highest levels,\u201d\u00a0he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an important opportunity that Cabinet Office must use to improve the experience of current and future users.\u201d<\/p>\n A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: \u201cWe have re-procured the contract for civil service pensions to ensure we maintain the strongest levers and controls over the performance of the service moving forward.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have, and will continue to hold MyCSP to account during its contract, including issuing financial penalties for poor performance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cabinet Office needs to learn lessons from customer service failings with the Civil Service Pension Scheme over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,2499,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-193354","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-personal-finance","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114702236008855322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}