Educational, not advice. This article explains what has happened with the company that runs the Civil Service Pension Scheme, and what it means if you are a member. It does not tell you what to do with your pension. Pension Plain is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. For decisions that depend on your circumstances, speak to a regulated adviser or the government’s free service, MoneyHelper.
Update, 8 August 2026: the taskforce has published its first real breakdown of the backlog, and the basis of the figures has changed. Taskforce update #14, issued on 6 August by pensions director Richard Vianello, gives the position as “17,014 members are waiting for a retirement quote, including those for future dates” and “There are 13,047 bereavement cases for Capita to resolve”. It also reports that 203 death in service cases are more than four months old, 175 of them with a spouse, civil partner or family waiting for a payment. Read those against the earlier numbers with care, because they do not count the same thing. The 9,463 quotes reported on 20 July counted requests already in the queue; the new figure deliberately includes members whose retirement date has not yet arrived. The 4,750 bereavement cases reported at that date, and the 3,099 waiting on returned paperwork in the 27 July recovery plan, are both narrower than “cases for Capita to resolve”. So the larger numbers are not a measure of how much worse the position has become. What they do show is that the scheme is now counting more of the problem, including work that has not fallen due yet, which is the first time it has published on that basis.
The oversight arrangements are clearer than they were, and one detail deserves stating plainly. Grant Thornton, described further down this page as an independent remediation advisor, is described by the scheme itself as “a consultancy firm acting as an independent third party, paid for and appointed by Capita, but with our agreement and working under our direction”. Both halves of that sentence matter. The supplier is paying for and appointed the firm now assessing whether its own recovery plan is realistic, and the Cabinet Office directs that work. A second and entirely separate appointment has since been made. The scheme says “We’ve now appointed an Auditor and are finalising terms”, and that the audit “will focus on Capita’s ‘rear view activity’”, meaning whether the right processes have been followed to the right standard on quotes, bereavements and pension payments since the contract began.
On McCloud, the honest answer is that the work has not started. The update asks members not to ring the contact centre about the 2015 Remedy “as Capita have yet to work through the recalculations”, and says a plan and timescales have been requested but not yet supplied. For Civil Service members that means there is still no published date by which remedy recalculations will be done. One date has firmed up: the retirement modeller, promised for months without one, is now expected “around mid-October”, with a progress report due in September. The taskforce update is published on the scheme member portal as taskforce update #14.
Earlier updates: 5 August back to 10 July 2026
Update, 5 August 2026: Capita’s own results put a figure on what this contract is costing it. On 4 August the company published its half year results for 2026. Adjusted revenue rose 1.6 percent to 906.4 million pounds, but adjusted operating profit “declined 31.6% mainly due to additional costs incurred on the Civil Service Pension Scheme contract, as previously announced”. On the results call, management put numbers on the contract itself: it generated about 15 million pounds of revenue in the half and caused about 14 million pounds of remediation costs, with a further 3 million pounds knocked off consulting revenue. The company also now expects to deliver positive free cash flow, excluding business exits, in 2027.
What that does and does not tell you. It does not change the pension you have earned, and it does not change the recovery timetable set out below. What it does show is that fixing this has become expensive enough to move Capita’s group results rather than being absorbed quietly, which is the clearest measure so far of the scale of the work. On the contract, the company said: “While the operational challenges on the Civil Service Pension Scheme remain our immediate priority, we are confident that we have the right processes, technology and leadership in place to achieve service levels and deliver for members.” One point of care for anyone following the numbers: the full-year guidance of a 25 to 40 million pound hit to adjusted operating profit and a 35 to 50 million pound hit to free cash flow was repeated here, not revised. Those ranges were already announced in July. The half-year outturn above is the new part.
Update, 28 July 2026: the government has now published the recovery figures itself, and they show where the delay actually sits. These numbers first appeared in the scheme’s member portal on 23 July. The Cabinet Office has since published them on GOV.UK, in its recovery plan update of 27 July 2026, with a breakdown that had not been given before. As at 20 July there were 9,463 retirement quotes still waiting to be issued. Of those, 7,194 are for members who asked for a quote before 5 June and whose retirement date was 30 June 2026 or earlier, so the oldest cases are the bulk of the problem rather than a tail of it. A further 2,269 requests have come in since 5 June.
The split that matters is the new part. Of those 9,463 cases, 6,500 are within Capita’s control to deliver and 2,936 are with employers waiting for data to be clarified. That is close to a third of the queue sitting outside the administrator altogether, which is why chasing Capita alone was never going to clear it. The same pattern shows up on bereavement: Capita has 4,750 cases to process, of which 1,461 are more than four months old, and it is waiting on 3,099 of them for paperwork to be returned. If you are dealing with one of these cases and have been sent forms, they are the thing holding that file. The Cabinet Office has also agreed the appointment of Grant Thornton as independent remediation advisor, which is assessing whether the assumptions behind Capita’s recovery proposals will deliver as expected, and is creating a quality assurance function inside the department to run a forensic review of a small sample of cases each month. The update sets out no target date for clearing the backlog. The next taskforce update is due on 6 August 2026. The member-portal version of these figures is at Civil Service Pensions Taskforce update #13.
The audit has been escalated, and the ministerial brief has changed hands. The government’s recovery plan update of 13 July 2026 went further than the technical audit described below, saying it was “executing our contractual right to deploy independent auditors immediately to conduct a review of systems, IT infrastructure, data integrity, and statutory compliance”. Responsibility for the scheme still sits with the Cabinet Office, but the minister has changed since the 8 July hearing described below: the Cabinet Office now lists Louise Haigh as First Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, in place of Nick Thomas-Symonds, who answered for the scheme at that hearing. The regular updates to members continue to come from the taskforce, under its pensions director Richard Vianello.
Update, 17 July 2026: why insourcing is a 2027 question, not a quick fix. Ministers keep calling the Civil Service scheme a strong candidate to be brought back in house, and there is now a formal route for it, though a medium-term one. Under new procurement rules that take effect in April 2027, every central government contract worth more than 1 million pounds has to be tested for whether it could be run in house before it is renewed, and departments that spend more than 100 million pounds a year must publish five-year insourcing plans. That is the machinery behind the insourcing talk, and also why nothing changes for members overnight.
Officials have been frank about the practical limit. The Civil Service chief operating officer, Cat Little, told MPs: “We are a very large customer for complex schemes in a market that has a very small number of suppliers.” When the work was last tendered, the field came down from six bidders to two. Rebuilding that capability inside government, or moving roughly 1.7 million members to a different provider, takes time to do safely, so the immediate job stays the same: getting Capita’s service back to standard. None of this changes the pension you have earned.
Update, 10 July 2026: from deadline to sanction, and the 8 July hearing. Since this article was published, the government has stepped up its response to the missed 30 June deadline. It has withheld 9.9 million pounds from Capita for missing contractual deadlines, ordered an independent technical audit of Capita’s systems and data, and appointed a remedial adviser, at Capita’s own expense, to drive corrections on the ground; it also intends to recover the cost of the roughly 140-person government team drafted in to help. Capita’s share price fell by around 15 percent on 7 July after the government’s position became public. The Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, described the contract as a prime candidate to be brought back in house and said the government would aim to do that by October if the evidence supports it, while cautioning that ending the contract overnight would risk leaving members without a working service.
On 8 July, the two committees of MPs questioned the minister and senior officials, and then Capita’s group chief executive and senior leaders, at their joint session. Capita’s group chief executive apologised repeatedly for a service the company accepted had not been good enough, and Capita said it expects to clear the bulk of retirement cases by 1 September and to return to normal contractual service by 30 September, with a small number of complex cases taking longer. Officials confirmed that Capita had been placed in contractual default and was expected to miss 16 of its 21 performance targets, and said the government would recover from Capita the full cost, put at 12.5 million pounds, of the officials drafted in to help. On the contract itself, ministers said every option remained open, including bringing the work back in house, called it a strong candidate for that, and stressed that no final decision had been taken.
If a delay has left you in financial hardship, the scheme is offering interest-free hardship loans, of up to 5,000 pounds, and up to 10,000 pounds in exceptional circumstances, while your case is put right. None of this changes your pension itself. Your Civil Service pension is set by the scheme rules and paid from government funds, so a struggling administrator can delay a quote or a payment but cannot reduce what you have earned.
What this article covers: the 30 June 2026 deadline Capita missed to restore the Civil Service Pension Scheme, the scale of the backlog, the call from the PCS union to strip Capita of the contract, the parliamentary hearing on 8 July, and what all of this means for you as a member right now.
What it does not cover: the detail of how Civil Service pension quotes have been delayed (see our guide to the Civil Service pension quote delays), the wider question of what happens when any public sector administrator fails (see When your pension administrator fails), or the McCloud remedy and your legacy-or-alpha choice (see our Civil Service pension and McCloud guide). This piece is about the Capita deadline and what comes next.
In short
- Capita missed the 30 June 2026 deadline the government set to bring the Civil Service Pension Scheme back to contractual standards.
- The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is now calling for Capita’s 239 million-pound contract to be taken away and the work brought back in house.
- Reporting on the backlog describes about 16,000 unread emails inherited from the previous administrator, around 20 million database errors, and roughly 13,000 cases more than a year old, with at least one member left more than six months without payment.
- The government’s end-of-June update, published on 3 July 2026, reported more than 15,380 retirement quotes issued and the remaining quote backlog falling to around 4,000, with about 4,500 other cases and 3,700 bereavement cases still being worked through.
- A joint session of two committees of MPs (the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee) questioned the minister and Capita’s leadership on 8 July 2026. Capita apologised, set a target of 30 September to return to normal service, and ministers called the contract a strong candidate for insourcing while stressing that no decision has been taken.
- Your pension itself is not at risk. This is an administration problem, not a funding one. Your benefits are set by the scheme rules and backed by the government, not by Capita’s performance.
What has actually happened
Capita runs the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme: the day-to-day work of answering members, producing retirement quotations, and putting pensions into payment. Through 2026 that service fell well below the standard members are entitled to, with long call waits, delayed quotes, and cases left unresolved for months. In response, the government set Capita a clear deadline of 30 June 2026 to bring the service back to contractual standards.
That deadline has now passed without the service being restored. The Cabinet Office’s own recovery-plan update of 29 June 2026 reported real improvement in some areas, but not a return to normal, and a fuller “end of June position” was promised for early July. The union that represents many civil servants, the PCS, went further and said plainly that the deadline had been missed.
Let’s be precise about what “missed the deadline” means here. It does not mean pensions have stopped being paid, or that money has gone missing. It means the administrator has not yet cleared the backlog and returned the service to the standard the contract requires. For a member waiting on a retirement quote or a bereavement case, that distinction is small comfort, but it matters for understanding how worried to be, and the honest answer is that this is a service failure, not a threat to your pension.
The numbers behind the backlog
Two pictures have emerged. The first is the government’s own account of progress. Its end-of-June position, published on 3 July 2026 as the eleventh update from the recovery taskforce, reported that Capita had by then issued more than 15,380 retirement quotations, with the remaining quote backlog expected to fall to around 4,000 early in the following week. Around 1,500 cases had been identified as needing extra work, and about 4,500 more cases, including data-checking cases, were still to be processed, with the aim of clearing them by the end of July. Around 3,700 bereavement cases were waiting on information from families, and about 4,000 members whose transfer-value calculations had been paused were due to be contacted from 6 July.
The same update reported that the average wait to get through on the phone had come down to about four minutes, far shorter than the long waits members faced earlier in the year, and it set out target processing times going forward: completed claims within 10 to 15 working days, lump sum payments within 7 to 10 days of the finalisation letter, and newly received retirement cases within four months.
The second picture, from reporting by Computer Weekly on 1 July, is harsher. It describes a contract worth 239 million pounds covering around 1.7 million scheme members; roughly 16,000 unread emails inherited from the previous administrator, MyCSP, when Capita took the work over; about 20 million database errors to work through (a figure Capita gave to MPs, which MyCSP disputes); and around 13,000 cases more than a year old. One member was reported to have gone more than six months without a pension payment.
These two accounts are not really in conflict. Call waits can have improved while a large structural backlog remains, because answering the phone faster and clearing a million-plus-member database of inherited errors are different problems. The figures above are drawn from the taskforce’s own end-of-June update and from press reporting.
The 8 July hearing added a fuller snapshot. Officials told MPs that about 111,700 items of work were outstanding, against a normal operating level of around 55,000, with more than 6,700 retirement quotations past their due date, more than 4,100 unresolved bereavement cases, and 3,127 delayed pension payments, 1,800 of them held up by more than 30 days. They said around 377,000 items of work had built up since Capita took the contract on, including about 90,000 inherited cases.
How we got here: the handover from MyCSP
Much of the difficulty has its roots in a change of administrator. For years the Civil Service scheme was run by an organisation called MyCSP; the contract then moved to Capita, and a large part of the current backlog is inherited rather than newly created. The roughly 16,000 unread emails and the millions of database errors did not appear overnight. They came across in the handover, and cleaning up another organisation’s records while also keeping a service of more than 1.7 million members running is a genuinely hard job. That is an explanation, not an excuse: members are entitled to the service regardless of whose records were in what state.
This is also why administration changes are one of the recurring risks in public sector pensions. Whenever a large scheme moves from one administrator to another, there is a window in which data has to be migrated, systems reconciled, and staff brought up to speed, and that window is when quotes slow down and cases go missing. The Civil Service scheme is the sharpest current example, but it is not the only one: the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is going through its own change of administrator, which we cover in our guide to the Teachers’ Pension administration handover. The wider point, which we set out in When your pension administrator fails, is that the safest habit is to keep your own records, because during a handover you cannot always rely on the administrator’s.
None of this is unusual enough to suggest your pension is unsafe. Large outsourced administration contracts run into trouble from time to time, and the system has ways of dealing with it, from ministerial deadlines to parliamentary scrutiny to the Pensions Ombudsman. What it does mean is that, for a while, you may have to be more persistent than you should have to be.
Why the union wants the contract taken away
The PCS union has called for the administration to be “insourced”, meaning taken off Capita and run by government staff directly rather than by a private contractor. Its general secretary, Fran Heathcote, said stripping Capita of the contract was the only way to restore confidence. That is the union’s position, and it is a stated demand rather than a decision anyone has taken; the government has not said it will remove the contract.
Since the 8 July hearing, a second union has added its voice. The FDA, which represents senior civil servants, welcomed what it called the government’s serious and decisive response, including the enforcement action against Capita, but said members had been badly let down and that their patience was understandably running out. It pointed to members with serious or terminal illness whose retirement plans had been disrupted, and it welcomed the review of whether the scheme could be brought back in house.
There is a relevant precedent worth understanding, because it shapes the debate. Capita held a separate contract to administer the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme, and that contract was ended over missed milestones. Critics ask why one Capita pension contract was terminated for poor performance while the much larger Civil Service one has been retained despite similar warnings. That is one of the questions MPs are likely to press on 8 July.
The recovery effort is being run at senior level. The taskforce set up to turn the scheme around is led by Angela MacDonald, the Second Permanent Secretary at HMRC, who gave evidence to MPs on 8 July alongside the Cabinet Office minister. Bringing administration back in house is also something the government has said it wants to move towards over time, with this scheme seen as a strong candidate once the service is stable again, though no decision to take the contract off Capita has been made.
Pension Plain does not take a view on who should run the contract. The point for members is simpler: whether the work stays with Capita or is brought back in house, your pension entitlement is unchanged, and any change of administrator would be a transfer of the same records and the same obligations, not a change to your benefits.
The 8 July hearing
On 8 July 2026, two committees of MPs held a joint evidence session on the Civil Service pension problems: the Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises whether public money is well spent, and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which looks at how government works. They questioned the Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, and senior officials, and then Capita’s group chief executive, Adolfo Hernandez, and two of the company’s senior pension leaders.
A hearing like this does not, in itself, fix anyone’s pension. What it does is put the recovery plan, the figures, and the future of the contract on the public record under questioning, which tends to concentrate minds. The questioning covered the missed deadline, the Royal Mail comparison, the recovery timetable, and whether members left out of pocket will be helped.
Capita’s group chief executive, Adolfo Hernandez, apologised repeatedly for a service the company accepted had not been good enough, blaming the scheme’s complexity, poor historical data, and technology problems. Capita said it expects to clear the bulk of retirement cases by 1 September and to return to normal contractual service by 30 September, with around 600 highly complex cases taking longer. Officials confirmed that Capita had been placed in contractual default and was expected to miss 16 of its 21 performance targets, that 9.9 million pounds had already been withheld, and that the government would recover from Capita the full cost, put at 12.5 million pounds, of the civil servants drafted in to help. On the future of the contract, ministers said every option remained open, including bringing the work back in house; they called the contract a strong candidate for that, while stressing that no decision had been taken and that running a scheme of about 1.7 million members in house would take time to build.
Is your pension safe? What this means for you
Yes. The most important thing to hold onto is that this is a problem with the administration of the scheme, not with the scheme itself. The Civil Service Pension Scheme is an unfunded public service scheme: your benefits are defined by the scheme rules and paid from central government funds, not from an investment pot that a contractor could lose. A struggling administrator can delay your quote or your payment; it cannot reduce the pension you have earned.
That said, a delay can cause real hardship, and there are practical steps if you are affected:
- If a payment is late, chase it in writing and keep a record of every contact. Ask specifically whether you qualify for one of the scheme’s interest-free hardship loans, which are available to members left short while their case is resolved.
- If you have been left out of pocket (for example, bank charges or interest because a payment was late), keep the evidence. You can claim for direct financial loss and for the distress and inconvenience caused by maladministration.
- If your complaint is not resolved, you can escalate it. Our guide to the Pensions Ombudsman for public sector members explains how, and the Ombudsman can order both correction and a payment for distress.
- If you are waiting on a retirement quote, our guide to the Civil Service pension quote delays covers what standard you are entitled to and how to push for it.
Be wary, too, of anyone who contacts you out of the blue offering to sort out your delayed pension for a fee, or to move it somewhere that will “pay out faster”. A period of administrative chaos is exactly when scammers appear. Your scheme will never cold-call you, and you never need to pay a third party to claim a pension you are already owed.
Frequently asked questions
Could I lose my Civil Service pension because of this?
No. Your benefits are set by the scheme rules and backed by government funds, not by Capita. The administrator’s problems can delay a quote or a payment, but they cannot cut the pension you have built up.
What was the 30 June 2026 deadline?
It was the date the government set for Capita to bring the Civil Service Pension Scheme’s administration back to the standard its contract requires, after a long period of poor service. That deadline passed without the service being fully restored.
Will Capita be removed from the contract?
That is not decided. The PCS union has called for the work to be brought back in house. At the 8 July 2026 hearing, ministers said every option remained open, including insourcing, and called the contract a strong candidate for that, while stressing that no decision to end it has been taken and that running a scheme of about 1.7 million members in house would take time to build. Capita has meanwhile been placed in contractual default over its missed targets.
My pension payment is late. What can I do?
Chase it in writing, keep a record, and ask whether you qualify for one of the scheme’s interest-free hardship loans while you wait. If you have lost money because of the delay, keep the evidence and complain; you can claim for direct loss and for distress. If the complaint is not resolved, you can take it to the Pensions Ombudsman.
Does this affect Teachers’ or NHS pensions?
This particular problem is about the Civil Service scheme and Capita. There is a separate administration change under way for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme; we cover that in our article on the Teachers’ Pension administration handover. The NHS scheme is administered separately and is not part of this story.
Pension Plain’s take
The headline that a deadline has been “missed” sounds alarming, and for anyone stuck in the backlog it is genuinely stressful. But the fear it tends to trigger, that a pension might vanish, is the wrong fear. Nothing about Capita’s performance changes what you are owed. The right response is not panic; it is persistence: chase in writing, keep records, claim for any loss, and escalate to the Ombudsman if you have to. The 8 July hearing put the people responsible on the record: Capita apologised, committed to a 30 September return to normal service, and now faces a contractual default and a possible move back in house if it cannot deliver. That is where the pressure to fix this belongs.
Information, not advice. This article is general information about the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme. It is not personal financial or legal advice, and Pension Plain is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. If you need advice about your own pension, speak to a regulated adviser or use the government’s free MoneyHelper service.
Key official sources
- Civil Service Pension recovery-plan updates (gov.uk), the government’s running record of the recovery, including the 29 June update and the promised end-of-June position.
- PAC and PACAC joint evidence session, 8 July 2026 (UK Parliament).
- Civil Service Pension Scheme, the scheme’s official information for members.