Capita left to deal with 13,000 civil service pension cases over a year old

Capita was left with 13,000 civil service pension cases that were over one year old when it took over the administration of the scheme in December 2025, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have been told.

Furthermore, the MPs heard that the previous administrator, while on its way out, advised members to call back with queries once Capita had taken over, adding to the complexity of the backlog.

Last month, it was revealed that Capita inherited thousands of unread emails and millions of database errors when it took over from the previous scheme administrator, MyCSP, and further challenges have now been revealed.

Capita was told to prepare for a backlog of up to 100,000 cases – it inherited 89,000. But the outsourcing giant stressed that many cases required more work than expected due to their long unresolved status and the number of unrecorded cases.

In 2023, the Cabinet Office awarded Capita a seven-year contract worth £239m to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS), which has 1.7 million members.

In October 2025, through a PAC report, MPs flagged concerns that Capita would not be ready to take over the pension scheme’s administration from MyCSP by 1 December 2025.

Then, in January, an HM Revenue & Customs troubleshooter was brought in to lead an “urgent recovery plan” as the pension scheme experienced difficulties.

In the latest PAC hearing, Chris Clements, managing director of Capita Pension Solutions, expanded on the causes of the problems it had experienced since it took on the contract.

He stated that 13,000 cases in the inherited backlog had been pending for over a year, contributing to delays in resolving the backlog.

“When we were told [about the backlog], we planned upon it being what I would call a normal but large work in progress,” he said. “What that means is that a normal work in progress would be four or five days of work for the operation, a large work in progress, maybe two or three weeks of work, and you work through that backlog.”

But Clements said in these scenarios, no individual case would be older than about a month. “You do the first in first, so that you would keep that churning through, and that’s what we planned on, and that’s the resource that we scaled up,” he said. However, when Capita received the details on taking over, it realised many cases were much older.

“When you get an old case, the level of emotion attached to that case and the speed you have to deal with it is much higher,” he said. As a result, the new administrator had to deal with these 13,000 very old cases first.

Beyond these old cases causing delays, there were problems with call volumes, which Clements said were the result of the previous administrator, MyCSP, advising scheme members to call back once Capita took over.

He said Capita was expecting about 8,000 phone calls in the first week of operation, but it received 25,000. “Over 17% of those calls told us that they had been told to go away and call back when Capita had taken over,” said Clements.

This meant Capita was not only experiencing more complex and older cases, which had higher emotional content for the members because they had been waiting so long, but also some cases were unrecorded because they’d called previously and been told to call back, explained Clements.

At the beginning of the hearing, PAC chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “We must remember that the Cabinet Office and MyCSP, respectively, are also responsible for the scheme and the state that it is currently in.”

One former civil servant affected by the long delays said: “Capita’s line on the mess left by MyCSP has been the same since this first kicked off, and they may well have a point. But if so, then MyCSP have to be held accountable for handing over a shitshow, and the Cabinet Office needs to explain why the risk was not adequately considered or mitigated in their due diligence process.”

During the hearing, Capita promised that the pension scheme administration, which has seen huge delays in paying members due to a botched service provider change, would be back to normal services by June.

Richard Holroyd, CEO of Capita’s public services division, provided an update, telling MPs that Capita has cleared all 15,000 unread emails and made progress on closing cases.

“Since 1 December, Capita has cleared and closed 145,000 cases. Over the past month, we’ve cleared the most acute member risks – death in service and ill health processing are back to normal levels,” he added. “Whilst challenges remain, we’re seeing progress and expect services to improve in the coming months.”

Holroyd reiterated a commitment to return to normal service levels by June.