Capita and the Cabinet Office have issued a joint statement acknowledging “serious issues” affecting members of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS), after widespread problems following the transfer of scheme administration in December.

Administration of the CSPS moved from MyCSP to Capita on 1 December 2025, alongside the launch of a new online pension portal.

Since then, members have reported difficulties with logging in, incomplete pension records, long waits on customer service calls, and delays to pension quotes and payments.

In a joint statement, Civil Service chief operating officer, Catherine Little, and Capita chief executive officer, Adolfo Hernandez, said Capita inherited a backlog of around 86,000 cases from the previous administrator, a significant proportion of which were already overdue.

They added that this led to higher-than-expected call volumes and complex queries, which compounded service issues.

“This is not the service members deserve,” the statement read, adding that both Capita and the Cabinet Office were “deeply sorry for the worry, frustration and distress this has caused”, particularly for members dealing with bereavement or ill health.

As part of the response, the Cabinet Office has asked HMRC deputy chief executive, Angela MacDonald, to oversee an urgent recovery plan.

Immediate actions agreed between Capita and the Cabinet Office included prioritising bereavement, ill-health retirement, and hardship cases, and deploying a surge team of more than 150 additional staff to help clear correspondence backlogs and speed up processing.

This would bring the total workforce supporting CSPS administration to more than 650.

The Cabinet Office is also working with government departments to agree interim support measures for members experiencing financial hardship due to delayed payments.

Capita added that it expected to restore service levels for the most urgent cases by the end of February, with full recovery of the remaining priority cases to follow.

In addition, the administrator is running a separate project to complete outstanding work related to the McCloud judgment, which involves issuing benefit choices to approximately 74,000 pensioners and 21,000 deferred members.

Members have been advised that current civil servants will receive information from their departments on how to access support.

The update follows an earlier apology from Capita for the “challenges” members faced, after ongoing concerns were raised about the stability of the new portal.

Issues identified included login failures, broken links and incomplete pages, with Microsoft brought in to help stabilise the system.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has also highlighted concerns about data mapping issues during the transfer from MyCSP, which it said led to validation failures and defects in the new system.

In previous statements, Capita said it was increasing capacity, with more than 500 staff already working on CSPS, and introducing new tools over the coming months, including “Track My Case” and “Retire Online”, to improve member access to services.

Capita stressed it would continue to prioritise bereavement, retirement and hardship cases, warning that response times may remain slower while longstanding cases were resolved.

“We take this responsibility and each case very seriously and are working closely with the Cabinet Office and HMRC to deliver the standard of service that members rightly expect,” the administrator said, adding that further updates would be provided as progress is made.

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