Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many retired civil servants have received late pension payments since the spin out of MyCSP in 2012.

MyCSP was spun-out as a mutual joint venture in May 2012. Mutualising MyCSP was good for staff, taxpayers and for the service they provide to pensioners. MyCSP will almost halve the cost of administering pensions within a decade, while improving services which were variable before. Employees of MyCSP have benefited through dividends, which they have received in both years since mutualisation. Staff survey figures show rising staff engagement and a decline in sickness absence.

MyCSP Ltd took over administration of the pensioner payroll in September 2014. Legacy problems were inherited from the previous supplier, including 5,579 cases where payments had already been delayed or missed by September 2014. MyCSP have now cleared all but 422 of these cases and MyCSP has switched available resources to reduce the remaining backlog as quickly as possible.

Since October 2014 there have been 1197 cases of delayed payment, most of which were the result of ongoing delays of the historic cases inherited from the previous supplier in September 2014.

Since October 2014 36 overseas pensioners have been awaiting payments. 33 of these are still outstanding because new banking mandates need to be completed to allow processing by the new paying bank.

MyCSP are doing everything possible to clear all remaining cases where payments are still due but are in many cases dependent on employers or pensioners themselves for the necessary information to do so. Where delayed payment has caused hardship MyCSP have been making emergency interim payments to members. The majority of the scheme’s 658,000 pensioners have been paid accurately and on time since September 2014.