PUBLIC SECTOR

Union says outsourcer will miss June 30 target after portal meltdown and mounting complaints

A union representing UK civil servants claims Capita is set to miss the terms of its £239 million contract to run a government pension scheme following a disastrous launch late last year.

The tech outsourcing company's leadership had promised that using Microsoft's AI would improve the service, but the investment has yet to help it reach the terms of its contract with the Cabinet Office.

Service levels following the move to Capita have been unacceptable

In a statement, the PCS union said the Cabinet Office confirmed that Capita would miss the ministerial deadline of June 30 to restore pension administration services to contractual standards, which it dubbed an unacceptable failure.

The Register has contacted Capita for a response.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "The service levels following the move to Capita have been unacceptable. An urgent recovery plan is underway, and our immediate priority is to stabilise service levels and give current and former Civil Servants the service they deserve.

"To this end, the Minister for the Cabinet Office Nick Thomas-Symonds set a deadline of the end of June for significant progress to have been made in this area, and we will assess the situation at the end of the month.

"We will continue to use all available commercial levers to hold Capita to account and ensure they deliver for both members and taxpayers."

The government is understood to be investigating the respective liabilities of both Capita and MyCSP – the previous provider – for these failures in the launch and handover of the service. 

The Reg first disclosed that the portal for the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) – which supports 1.5 million current and former public servants – appeared to be incomplete and barely functional when it launched in December. Users were forced to create new accounts, which went unrecognized, and they endured broken and circular links while the website appeared unfinished and untested, with headers and other features displaying dummy text.

Multiple reports followed of scheme members struggling to get hold of their savings. Retired civil servants lost income after pension payments failed to arrive, according to the BBC.

Capita said it had inherited a larger backlog of cases than agreed. Initially, it expected a transfer of around 37,300 cases from MyCSP. Later, that increased to volumes of up to 100,000.

Nonetheless, the service continues to fail to meet its contractual terms, the PCS said. To date, 607 MPs have received at least one email from constituents about this crisis, with more than 3,000 emails sent in total, the union added.

Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary, said: "This is beyond disappointing, but I can't say it's surprising. Capita has missed deadline after deadline, yet civil servants and pension scheme members continue to pay the price for those failures.

"Minor financial penalties mean little when you look at the size of the contracts they've been awarded. They're certainly no comfort if you're facing financial hardship because you've retired and your pension hasn't been paid.

"How much more evidence does the government need? Capita has failed to restore confidence in this service. Ministers must now take immediate steps to bring the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme back into the Civil Service."

This is beyond disappointing, but I can't say it's surprising

In January, the Cabinet Office – which ran the procurement – and Capita both apologized for the botched launch of the service. Angela MacDonald, deputy chief executive at HM Revenue & Customs, was also recruited "to lead oversight of an urgent recovery plan."

A surge team of "over 150 additional staff" was also deployed to "support clearing the correspondence backlogs and speed up processing."

In March, Catherine Little, civil service chief operating officer and Cabinet Office permanent secretary, admitted that Capita did not deliver the full levels of IT, automation, and portal functionality at go-live, significantly reducing its ability to manage the volumes of work it inherited. ®