The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has published a series of follow-up letters as part of its ongoing scrutiny of Capita's management of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS).

The correspondence follows earlier warnings from the PAC that Capita may not have been ready to take over administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) from MyCSP.

Capita inherited a substantial backlog when the service transferred in December 2025, with around 86,000 outstanding cases at the point of transition.

At the end of January, Capita and the Cabinet Office issued a joint statement acknowledging “serious issues” affecting Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) members, declaring that it expected full service to be restored to Civil Service pensions by the end of June

Among the latest developments, the Cabinet Office confirmed that it had reported a data breach involving CSPS annual benefit statements to the Information Commissioner’s Office, describing the incident as “unacceptable”.

Cabinet Office civil service chief operating officer and permanent secretary, Catherine Little, said she had requested “absolute assurance” from Capita on the steps being taken to prevent a recurrence, adding that a full technical explanation of the incident was expected.

Further details provided by Capita Public Services CEO, Richard Holroyd, confirmed that 138 members were affected during a 35-minute window on 30 March, when some users were able to view other members’ pension data via the scheme’s online portal.

Holroyd apologised for the incident and said the functionality had been suspended while a full investigation was carried out, with affected members contacted directly.

In a separate update to the PAC, Holroyd outlined progress in addressing ongoing service issues, including payment and member communications delays, while acknowledging continued disruption.

He confirmed that Capita aimed to clear the backlog of overdue retirement payments by the end of April 2026, with bereavement cases expected to return to normal service levels by the end of May and quotation processing to return to normal service levels by the end of June.

Holroyd also said the firm had answered more than 112,000 calls since December 2025, with very low call abandonment rates, and had introduced new customer satisfaction monitoring, although early results showed a score of just under 48 per cent following the launch of telephone surveys.

The correspondence also highlighted the introduction of 'transition loans' (previously referred to as hardship loans) for members experiencing financial difficulty, alongside additional staff training to better support vulnerable members.

Meanwhile, MyCSP, the scheme’s previous administrator, used its submission to the PAC to push back on claims around the scale and nature of the backlog inherited by Capita.

MyCSP CEO, Duncan Watson, claimed that, while around 87,800 work items were transferred at the point of transition, only around 36,000 related to key service-level cases, with the remainder comprising broader “work in progress” items without defined deadlines.

Watson also raised concerns about the transition process itself, suggesting that Capita’s “discovery phase” did not fully utilise MyCSP’s experience of administering the scheme and that transition planning lacked sufficient detail and testing.

He added that MyCSP had warned the Cabinet Office as early as July 2025 that Capita may not have been ready to take over administration, with contingency plans discussed but ultimately not implemented.

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