Updated

Updated · BBC.com · Jul 21

Capita Delays 4,500 Civil Service Bereavement Cases for 9 Months as UK Withholds Payments

Updated

Updated · BBC.com · Jul 21

Capita Delays 4,500 Civil Service Bereavement Cases for 9 Months as UK Withholds Payments

Q: What 'serious doubts' did officials ignore before this pension crisis began?

Officials ignored clear warnings that Capita was not ready to take over the Civil Service Pension Scheme. Before the handover, the National Audit Office said Capita had missed key transition milestones, while the Public Accounts Committee warned in October 2025 that there was a “clear risk” the company would not be ready by the 1 December transfer date. Trade unions also raised repeated concerns with the Cabinet Office about the move. The doubts were not abstract. Officials knew Capita was preparing to inherit a huge backlog and was planning to run the service with fewer staff than the previous administrator, MyCSP. They also knew important systems work was incomplete: Capita had not delivered the IT automation and member portal capability needed to handle the expected volume of cases efficiently. The timing of the government’s own decision reflected those concerns. The final “go/no-go” approval was made very late, on 11 November 2025, less than a month before the transfer, which critics said showed ministers and officials already had serious reservations about Capita’s ability to run the scheme. Even so, the Cabinet Office pressed ahead because MyCSP was itself in deep trouble and seen as commercially unviable. In effect, officials chose what they regarded as the less bad option, despite evidence that Capita’s transition was high-risk and incomplete. Those warnings later proved well founded as backlogs, bereavement delays and service failures escalated.

2 articles · Updated · BBC.com · Jul 21

More than 4,500 families were still waiting on Capita to process civil service bereavement cases as of July 10, with the contractor now targeting early September to clear them.
Nine months after her husband died, Catherine Curtis said she still has not received his civil service pension, leaving her in debt to her children, reliant on credit and briefly at risk of eviction.
The Cabinet Office said Capita had repeatedly missed recovery targets and was delivering a service "completely unacceptable" to members and taxpayers, prompting the government to withhold payments and other commercial measures.
Capita apologized and said service had "not been good enough," especially for bereavement, retirement and quotation cases, but said new processes, automation and technology were in place to work through the backlog.
The government has also said it will bring the civil service pension scheme back in-house, underscoring how the delays have widened from individual hardship to a broader contract failure.