Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what account he has made of the performance of the launch of MyCSP; what targets have been set for the delivery of this service; and whether they have been met to date.

The launch of MyCSP as a mutual joint venture (MJV) was reported in the Cabinet Office Annual Report and Accounts 2012-13.

The Cabinet Office has a contract with MyCSP Limited to provide pension administration services for the Civil Service pension scheme. MyCSP has met all key performance standards since February 2013. Overall performance is reviewed at regular contract meetings with officials and by the Civil Service Pensions Board which includes industry experts and nominees of Civil Service employers and scheme members.

Further to my answer of 8 January 2015 to the hon. Member for Leicester South about pre-existing issues, MyCSP took responsibility for the administration of the pensioner payroll from the previous supplier and inherited an unexpectedly large backlog of work. This caused a temporary dip in performance and some pension payments were delayed as a result. The Cabinet Office has instructed MyCSP to prioritise ensuring delayed payments are resolved quickly and returning service levels to normal as quickly as possible.

MyCSP vested as a MJV in May 2012 which permitted the injection of much needed new investment in IT, capability and technology into MyCSP. None of the recent service issues are as a result of the MJV model. The transformation this investment is enabling will allow MyCSP to deliver a wider range of services (including online services) to higher standards whilst halving the cost of pension administration within 10 years. Even before this transformation is fully completed (and whilst continuing to work with legacy systems and problems inherited from the predecessor organisation), MyCSP has improved productivity by 15% year-on-year since 2012, driven down staff absenteeism, while also improving staff engagement.