Civil Service Pensions Taskforce head Angela MacDonald will retire from the civil service at the end of July, it has emerged.
MacDonald has served as second permanent secretary and deputy chief executive at HM Revenue and Customs since 2020, but was drafted in to lead efforts to resolve the Civil Service Pension Scheme backlog crisis in January this year.
HMRC said MacDonald will be “focused” on the CSPS work until she leaves government.
MacDonald joined the civil service in 2009 after holding several roles at insurance giant Aviva. She originally worked at the Department for Work and Pensions, but left to become HMRC’s director general for customer services in 2017.
HMRC first permanent secretary and chief executive JP Marks thanked MacDonald for her contribution to the work of government and praised her career achievements.
“I am very grateful to Angela for her exceptional leadership of HMRC, across the operational delivery profession and Yorkshire region throughout her career,” he said.
“Angela has had an outstanding 30-year career, and as second permanent secretary, has been central to transforming HMRC’s customer service and compliance performance, leading HMRC through the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I’d like to thank Angela for her leadership and commitment to public service. The whole department wishes her all the very best for the future.”
Civil Service World understands that MacDonald’s plans to retire from government this summer were announced internally in December last year.
The Cabinet Office, which has overall responsibility for the CSPS, is planning to appoint an operational director who will serve as a permanent successor to MacDonald at the department. It said they would be a “highly skilled operational director” who will be confirmed following a “competition process”.
HMRC is not currently planning to recruit another second permanent secretary. Responsibilities are being shared across a smaller leadership team, led by Marks.
MacDonald was appointed to her CSPS recovery role in mid-January, weeks after outsourcing giant Capta took over from MyCSP as scheme administrator and the full scale of the backlog crisis began to emerge.
Thousands of civil servants have been left waiting for regular payments and lump sums, prompting the need for emergency loans for former civil servants.
Processing delays have also left officials who are close to retirement in the dark about what their pension entitlement will be, placing them in the position of being unable to plan for the future.
As of last month, there were more than 23,000 pension quotations waiting to be processed. Scheme members were told this would be done in batches by the end of June.
MacDonald’s most recent update on the recovery work acknowledged that while many thousands of lump-sum payments have been made – and pensions put into payment – over recent months, “many more thousands are still waiting”.
The 23 April message described the recovery period as being at a “critical stage”, with “many challenges” remaining “on a number of fronts”.
MacDonald told CSPS members that Capita has committed to restore service levels to agreed contractual levels by the end of June.
“Please be assured that Capita will be held to account to ensure members get the service they deserve,” she said.
In addition to its work in relation to resolving the CSPS pension scheme problems, the Cabinet Office is also investigating the respective liabilities of Capita and MyCSP.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson repeated the department’s view that service levels following the 1 December 2025 move to Capita have been “unacceptable”.
“An urgent recovery plan is under way, and our immediate priority is to stabilise the service and give current and former civil servants the service they deserve,” they said. “This emergency intervention will continue to be prioritised and led by the Cabinet Office.”