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When Capita took over administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme on 1 December 2025, 13,000 of the 89,000 cases it inherited had already been waiting for more than a year, according to Capita managing director Chris Clements. That is a figure for the backlog at handover—not a count of cases still open today, and not a count of 13,000 unpaid pensions.
What the 13,000 figure means
Clements gave the figures to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on 26 March 2026. He told MPs: “we inherited 89,000 cases on 1 December, 13,000 of which had been waiting for more than a year.” The 13,000 therefore describes the age of a portion of the cases Capita received at the transfer date.
The testimony does not establish how many of those particular cases were subsequently resolved, nor does the latest Cabinet Office update give a current count of all open cases that are more than a year old. It would be misleading to describe 13,000 as the number still outstanding now.
What counted as a case?
The inherited total was not simply a list of pensions waiting to be paid. The work included a range of member-service and pension-administration issues. The joint Capita and Cabinet Office statement referred to portal access, incomplete pension information, customer calls, retirement quotations and payment delays.
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Clements told MPs that the work varied greatly in complexity: he said an address change might take 15 minutes, while a death-in-service or complex split-service case could take up to 15 hours. In his words, “The issue was not just the absolute number of cases, but their nature and content.” These are Capita’s descriptions of the work, rather than an independently measured assessment of every case.
Why the transfer became a point of dispute
Capita told the PAC that it had planned for a large but ordinary work-in-progress queue and scaled its resources on that basis. Clements said the company recruited 180 additional staff and transferred 330 staff from MyCSP, the previous administrator. He said the cases proved older than expected once staff opened them after the handover.
Rank #2
Capita also said it received 25,000 calls in its first week, compared with an expected 7,000 to 8,000, and that more than 17% of callers reported being told to call back after the transfer. Those are figures from Capita’s witness testimony; they do not independently establish why callers were asked to call back or the cause of each service problem.
MPs questioned whether the discovery phase before the transfer should have revealed more about the size, age and complexity of the work. Clements said Capita had requested information on the quantity, nature, age and description of cases, received different data downloads, and only saw the actual age of cases when it opened them after go-live. The hearing records both the company’s explanation and MPs’ challenge; it does not by itself settle responsibility for the transition problems.
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Clements also told the committee: “With an old case, the level of emotion attached to it and the speed with which you have to deal with it are much higher.” That was his explanation of the pressure involved in older cases, not a finding by the committee.
What the latest published backlog figures show
The Cabinet Office’s recovery update, published on 7 September 2026 and updated on 5 October, reports figures supplied by Capita. Its table counts specified types of cases that were more than 100 days old. It is not a count of every open case, and its 100-day threshold is different from the more-than-one-year threshold used for the inherited figure.
| Case type over 100 days old | Total | Workable, with payment within 15 days | Requiring third-party information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bereavement | 1,069 | 266 | 803 |
| Death in service | 308 | 41 | 267 |
| Ill-health retirement | 12 | 1 | 11 |
| Payment | 288 | 66 | 222 |
The table distinguishes cases Capita described as workable for payment within 15 days from cases requiring information from a third party. It does not say that all the latter cases would be resolved within that period, or that every case in the wider backlog appears in these categories.
Retirement quotations are a separate measure
The same update says about 4,000 retirement quotations remained at the end of June. Capita committed to clear that backlog within six weeks and had issued 3,087 quotations by the end of August, leaving approximately 900 from the end-June group. It also committed to issuing quotations within six weeks of receipt from July. These figures concern quotations, not all open pension cases.
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An earlier parliamentary written answer on 18 June 2026 reported approximately 24,000 members awaiting quotations and said key performance indicators and penalties had been strengthened, while some ill-health and death-in-service delays persisted. That is an earlier snapshot with a different date and definition; it should not be added to or directly compared with the later end-June quotation backlog.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How large the scheme is—and what is being investigated
The National Audit Office (NAO) reported that the Civil Service Pension Scheme had 1.7 million members and £189 billion in future pension liabilities as at 31 March 2024. It covers the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme and the Civil Servants and Others Pension Scheme. The Cabinet Office had contracted with MyCSP since 2012 and awarded Capita a new administration contract in 2023, with service due to begin in December 2025.
The NAO reported 4,780 complaints about the scheme in 2024–25. Its investigation, published on 16 June 2025, covers Cabinet Office oversight, customer service and preparations for the administrator transfer. Those figures establish the scale of the scheme and the oversight context; they are not findings that determine the cause of post-transfer delays.
What members should take from the figures
- The 13,000 figure is historical: it refers to cases already more than a year old when Capita took over on 1 December 2025.
- “Case” is broader than “unpaid pension”: the inherited work included several kinds of administration, member contact and pension processing.
- Later numbers measure different things: the Cabinet Office’s latest cited table covers selected case categories over 100 days old, while quotation counts track a separate queue.
- The full current position is not stated in these updates: the cited sources do not provide a current count of every open case or a complete independent explanation of responsibility for each delay.
The joint Capita and Cabinet Office statement acknowledged reports of portal problems, incomplete pension information, long call waits and delays to quotations and payments, including financial hardship in some cases. It described an urgent recovery plan overseen by Angela MacDonald, then HMRC’s Deputy Chief Executive, with priority handling for bereavement, ill-health retirement and hardship. The statement records the plan and reported problems at that time; it does not establish the later outcome for every member or case.
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