The Cabinet Office has brought in major global professional services firm Grant Thornton to act as the independent remediation adviser for the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
With the scheme remaining in crisis now nearly eight months on from its transfer to Capita, the Cabinet Office earlier this month announced it would appoint an on-the-ground remedial adviser, “entirely at Capita’s expense, to force day-to-day operational rectification”.
Giving an update on these plans on Friday, Richard Vianello, the Cabinet Office’s new director of civil service pensions, said: “We have spent the last week going through the detail of Capita's proposals, and Grant Thornton are now assessing whether the underpinning assumptions and actions/mitigations will deliver as expected. I will update you as this work progresses.”
Vianello said he has also agreed with Capita to create a quality assurance function within the Cabinet Office that “will provide us with a forensic review of a small sample of cases each month, so that we can check quality and adherence to process”.
Vianello said he will be recruiting for these posts “in the next week or so”.
On the Cabinet Office’s plans to deploy independent auditors, Vianello said work is ongoing to agree the scope of the audit.
Vianello's update also sets out the latest state of backlogs in the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
The latest figures show that, as of 20 July, there were 9,463 retirement quotes that needed to be issued, of which 7,194 were for members who requested a quote before 5 June and had a past retirement date of 30 June 2026 or earlier.
The update also shows there were 4,750 bereavement cases which needed processing, of which 1,461 are more than four months old.
Vianello said the figures show "we are not out of the woods, but we are making progress and seeing some improvements". He also noted that there is no update on lack of a retirement modeller.
"Please be assured that my team is doing everything possible to stabilise operations and deliver the service you expect," he added. "I will write to you again on 6 August."