Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many members of the Civil Service Pension Scheme reached their retirement date before receiving a retirement benefits quotation in the most recent period for which data is available.

The Cabinet Office awarded Capita the contract to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme in November 2023 under the previous government. The current delays facing scheme members are entirely unacceptable, and this Government has taken firm action to resolve them through a clear recovery plan with strict delivery milestones. We have deployed additional resources to expedite priority cases, ensuring that serving and former staff receive the high standard of service they deserve. Regular progress updates remain available to members via the pension portal and Gov.uk.

Capita is under a firm mandate to restore full service delivery to standard contractual levels by the end of June 2026. We are actively exploring the use of all available commercial and contractual levers and continue to withhold milestone payments for missed transition deliverables. All options remain on the table if they fail to meet the June deadline.

Pension quotation requests are prioritised on the basis of the retirement date to the extent that Capita has all of the required data and information to process the quotation. This may mean that some later retirement dates are processed ahead of earlier retirement dates. Death in service and ill-health cases are also prioritised.

All retirement benefit calculations issued by Capita under the Civil Service Pension Scheme are based entirely on the latest data provided by the employer. Because these calculations rely directly on verified employer inputs, all quotes are deemed to be correct at the point of first issue.

The Cabinet Office is unable to provide a specific breakdown of the number of Civil Service Pension Scheme members who reached their retirement date before receiving a retirement benefits quotation, as members retire at different times, including early, late, or partial retirement. Around 20,000 members currently await pension quotations from Capita, including outstanding historical cases left unprocessed by the previous administrator.