Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to tackle the delay in former civil servants receiving their occupational pensions.

In October 2023, system and process changes were implemented to rectify the pension position of those members impacted by the McCloud judgment, a legal ruling impacting approximately 420,000 Civil Service pension members. This had a significant impact on business as usual ‘retirement quotes’ and ‘finalisations’ as the new systems and processes went live and were embedded over the following months. This led to a dip in performance in providing retirement quotes and paying lump sum payments at retirement. The delay in lump sum payments for some members was up to 20 days; however, monthly retirement benefit payments were not affected and paid on time.

The Cabinet Office, as Scheme Manager, has worked closely with MyCSP to rectify this position and return to meeting contractual performance levels. This was achieved at the end of September last year. For the last six months, up to and including March this year, MyCSP is back to achieving over 99.7% of their service level agreements. We continue to monitor performance carefully and work to ensure that any complaints or errors are identified and addressed as quickly as possible.