RE: Pensions7 Feb 2026 14:11
Cabinet Office’s contract with MyCSP, the current administrator of the Civil Service Pension Scheme, has not always effectively addressed when performance has fallen below agreed customer service levels, a new National Audit Office (NAO) report outlines.
The NAO investigation was instigated after a reported rise in the level of complaints about the Scheme from 3,335 in 2016/17 to 4,780 in 2024/25, coupled with correspondence from scheme members detailing concerns about the service they had received.
MyCSP’s contact centre performance has been below expected levels with an overall decline over the last two years. The target is to answer at least 80% of calls within 30 seconds, however, over the last two years, they have at best answered 43% of calls within 30 seconds and in November 2024, MyCSP was taking an average of 24 minutes to answer calls. However, as this is not a key service level, it does not attract a financial penalty, therefore limiting Cabinet Office’s ability to incentivise improvements to MyCSP’s performance.
Alongside the existing management of the civil service pension, Cabinet Office also faces the challenge of implementing a Remedy programme in response to the 2018 Court of Appeal ruling which found that the government’s 2015 changes to public sector schemes were discriminatory based on age.
This created a substantial and complex programme of work for MyCSP to administer in addition to the existing contract expectations. By the end of 2024-25, Cabinet Office had spent an additional £31.7 million funding on around one hundred MyCSP staff and contractors to implement the remedy, representing approximately 20% of MyCSP’s total workforce.