The government has suggested that recent delays in formal civil servants receiving their occupational pensions as a result of the McCloud fallout have now been resolved, with the My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP) portal back at contractual performance levels.

Cabinet Office Parliamentary Secretary and MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, Georgia Gould, confirmed that, in October 2023, system and process changes were implemented to rectify the pension position of those members impacted by the McCloud judgment, a legal ruling impacting approximately 420,000 Civil Service pension members.

“This had a significant impact on business as usual ‘retirement quotes’ and ‘finalisations’ as the new systems and processes went live and were embedded over the following months,” she acknowledged.

“This led to a dip in performance in providing retirement quotes and paying lump sum payments at retirement. The delay in lump sum payments for some members was up to 20 days; however, monthly retirement benefit payments were not affected and paid on time.”

However, Gould confirmed that the Cabinet Office, as scheme manager, has worked closely with MyCSP to rectify this position and return to meeting contractual performance levels, confirming that this was achieved at the end of September last year.

“For the last six months, up to and including March this year, MyCSP is back to achieving over 99.7 per cent of their service level agreements,” she revealed.

“We continue to monitor performance carefully and work to ensure that any complaints or errors are identified and addressed as quickly as possible.”

This is not the only scheme to face delays as a result of the McCloud judgement, as the government recently confirmed that there would be a delay in the production of NHS pension scheme remedial service statements, after technical complexities impacted delivery timelines.

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