Capita has said it expects to deliver the recovery plan for the Civil Service Pension Scheme by the end of June but “this may not represent full recovery across all services”.
The scheme has been in crisis since Capita took on its administration on 1 December 2025. The firm has committed to achieve standard contracted service levels for all cases by the end of June.
In a letter to the Public Accounts Committee, Richard Holroyd, chief executive of Capita Public Services, said the firm is “now on a clear trajectory to have a more normalised CSPS service by the end of June, with continued improvements and automation changing the service the members expect”.
Holroyd said current “performance remains uneven” but “measurable progress” has been made in May “in stabilising services, reducing backlogs and improving operational control, supported by increased automation, improved digital services and strengthened governance”.
This commitment to bring services back to acceptable service levels was made as part of a recovery plan which was launched by the Cabinet Office and Capita on 28 January and which has seen hundreds of Surge and Rapid Response Team civil servants drafted in to help get the service back on track.
As part of the recovery, Capita committed to prioritise hardship cases, ill-health retirements and bereavement cases, but there still remain people in these categories who have not experienced any progress on their cases and some have been waiting for as long as nine months to receive payment.
In his letter to PAC, sent on 5 June but published yesterday, Holroyd said: “We are committed to achieving the service recovery plan that we agreed with the Cabinet Office by the end of June. We remain on trajectory to achieve this."
Holroyd said this "will deliver a materially more stable service for the majority of members". But he added that "this may not represent full recovery across all services".
The Capita exec said that backlog cases, for example, “will have been cleared being either resolved or have clear next steps in place” by the end of this month.
On quotations, he said those “with clean data received from the beginning of June will be processed and then issued to members” by the end of this month.
Holroyd said the firm is also “building the required capacity to manage” expectations of:
- A significant number of retirement cases as members activate their quotations
- Queries and potential changes to quotations
- "Pent up demand" of members who have delayed retirements requesting quotations.
Holroyd said “most new priority cases are expected to be processed within service levels, although a small number of complex or non-standard cases may still take longer”.
And he said casework raised by MPs before early June on behalf of their affected constituents is “expected to have been acknowledged, updated or responded to”.
“I recognise the impact on members and reiterate our apology for delays experienced,” Holroyd added. “I can assure the committee that recovery of the CSPS remains Capita’s highest operational priority.”