We had one of our regular meetings in mid-January with colleagues in the Cabinet Office, at which we raised various issues of interest to CSPA members, including our members’ current experience of MyCSP’s services and progress made on the 2015 Remedy choices to be offered to those who are eligible. The latter applies to those who have retired since March 2015, who are being asked if they would like to take their pensions for post March 2015 service under their legacy scheme or the Alpha scheme. 

We have been informed that letters and ‘choice packs’ for the most straightforward cases are being posted to members between the 31^st January and the 31^st March 2025, with letters to those with more complex cases following on. In answer to our concerns that not all members can expect to receive their ‘Remedy’ choices by the legislative deadline, the Cabinet Office have told us that “there are a variety of factors that make some pension calculations more complex and, as a result, we will not be able to issue Remedial Service Statements to all retired and deferred affected members by 31^st March 2025”.

We have been advised that in some cases, the issue of choice packs may take up to 2 years. The Cabinet Office say they appreciate that some members may find this disappointing, but that they are working to ensure that nobody will lose out and that work on ‘The Remedy’ implementation continues unabated across the transition to the new service providers.  

CSPA members who are Northern Ireland Civil Service Pensioners and have service within the scope of The Remedy (McCloud Judgement) are advised that the timeline for communication regarding their Remedy choices will differ from the one applicable to those with UK Civil Service pensions administered by MyCSP. 

The Cabinet Office have confirmed that they are on track in managing the transfer of Civil Service Pensions administration from MyCSP to Capita, with the ‘go live’ date for Capita having been set for December 2025. As you can imagine, there are a multitude of complex processes involved in ensuring a seamless and secure transfer of pensions data over, and a great deal of work is being done on this front behind the scenes. The Cabinet Office team managing the transition are currently carrying out various cycles of testing with employer user groups and will soon be moving onto testing the new portals with groups of pensioners to ensure a positive experience for users. We will keep CSPA members updated in the coming months but do look out for communications from Civil Service Pensions in this regard as well.

Two hundred thousand pensioners are now registered on the MyCSP online pensions portal, representing some 30% of scheme members. We would encourage you to visit Member Portal – Home Page and sign up to access your individual pensions information on the website if you haven’t already done so, as it is very useful. Once registered, you will be able to see your pension amounts, history, the personal details they hold for you, as well as your nominated beneficiaries. There is also a wealth of information available to those who have any queries.

As you may be aware, if you have recently tried to contact MyCSP by telephone, there have been some issues with call answering times, especially in recent months due to an increase in the numbers of people entering retirement and partial retirement, alongside the additional work to support the 2015 Remedy implementation. We have been assured that additional staff are being brought in to assist in the call centre, so we hope this will bring about some improvement.

This month, another of our focuses has been work on campaigns around Digital Exclusion and Inclusion. In October 2024, I wrote to Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Raynor MP, to raise concerns about access to the Household Support Fund and other Local Authority administered services, and their growing reliance on a ‘digital first’ approach to resident communications and the provision of support.

The need for such support, for pensioners and other householders struggling to pay their bills for even the most basic essentials, has been highlighted this Winter by the recent withdrawal of universal Winter Fuel Allowance payments by the Chancellor.

We recently received a letter in response from Jim McMahon OBE MP, Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, picking up on many of the concerns we had raised about ‘Digital Exclusion’ and the need for the Government to ensure greater ‘Inclusion’ by supporting wider access to online resources from across all groups in society. We have enlisted the support of the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) Digital Working Party, in taking the campaign forwards in this regard by writing to the Chair of the Local Government Association on behalf of pensioners.

We are excited to announce the launch of a series of CSPA audio ‘podcasts’, on topics of interest ranging from pensions to power of attorney, as well as informal conversations with those providing CSPA member benefits, our campaign partners and possibly even our own Executive Council members. The podcasts are available via the CSPA website www.cspa.co.uk/listen, but if you are not online and would like to be sent a transcript, do give us a call at CSPA head office and we can arrange this for you.