Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft




CIVIL SERVICE PENSIONERS ALLIANCE REPORT for RPGA COMMITTEE MEETING & AGM 
13 OCTOBER 2025

Membership

CSPA membership stands at 33,655. 
1,597 members ‘lost’ since January 2025 of which 971 (60.8%) are deceased. 517 new members gained (398 joining online). The median age of CSPA members is currently 80 years (124 members are recorded as aged 100 or above)

Campaigns
Pensioners Budget: Plans for a Later Life Ambitions (LLA) parliamentary event to launch a ‘Pensioners’ Budget’ are progressing well and a room has been booked for the 28th of October with the kind sponsorship of Kirsty Blackman MP (SNP, Aberdeen North) in the House of Commons. There will be a lot of emphasis on the work that the Deputy GS David Luxton has done regarding the freeze of tax allowance. If the personal allowance, which currently stands at £12,570 had been allowed to rise with inflation it would be £15,518 as opposed to being frozen until 2028. The result is that pensioners are already losing £657per year, directly due to the freeze on tax personal allowances. It is also quite likely that by 2028, when and if the personal allowance is unfrozen, that pensioners will be paying tax on their basic state pension, assuming we continue to receive rises under the triple lock system. Next year’s is likely to be 4.7% due to the rate of average earnings aspect of the Triple Lock. Our Civil Service pensions should rise by 3.8%, in line with September inflation figure which is used for uprating purposes..

Social Care: Officers have continued to support CSPA’s social care campaigns through work with the Care and Support Alliance (CSA) in recent months. Several organisations have had introductory meetings with members of the Casey Commission’s team. The Terms of Reference for this inquiry were published on 2 May 2025.

Postal Services: In response to recent AGM motions the General Secretary has emailed the CWU union (23 July) to express CSPA’s support for their campaigns on the need to preserve the Universal Service Obligation (USO) and to find out more about how we might engage with their campaigns in this regard. 

​Women’s State Pension WASPI Campaign: The CSPA are concerned about the DWP's dismissive responses to recent parliamentary questions on this issue. WASPI now has permission for judicial review of the Government's rejection of Ombudsman findings. The CSPA continue to support and promote the campaign.

Meeting With Cabinet Office 9th September 2025
CSPA expressed grave concern about the service our members are currently experiencing from MyCSP.

Cabinet Office colleagues, at the last meeting, acknowledged the difficulties facing members but then it looked like things were improving. However, PCS are currently on strike and service delivery has deteriorated. Consequently, only priority work is being processed.

Retirements have gone up by 8-9% year on year, which is adding to the MyCSP workload. 

There is a note on the CS Pensions website saying only urgent cases are being processed,

The Cabinet Office reported that the transition to Capita as CS Pension administrators was on track for December 1st. Everything might not be ready, but the front facing website will look like the new contract has started. There are plans in place if contingencies are needed. The contact phone number will remain the same. 
Once the new website is up and running, Capita intend to discourage emails and will try to get people to use the online contact form instead, because it elicits more information in an intelligible format. 

Regarding the McCloud Judgement Remedy, around 44% of the ‘Immediate choice’ options letters have gone to people who had service during the Remedy period (2015-22) and who have subsequently retired (I’m in the 66% still waiting). Once the Remedy is applied, the average change in members’ pension payments is around £200 per annum, but it can be many thousands or a lot less, in one case just 74p.

They are 67% of their way through the returned ‘choices’, in terms of making payments. 

At the end of this month, no new cases will be taken on by MyCSP, as the work on the transition to Capita will start behind the scenes. Capita had not planned for the work on the Remedy implementation, as all this was meant to be completed by March 2025, so it had not been included within their main contract. They are to be given a ‘lead in’ period, prior to commencement of this work, to enable them to establish the necessary processes.

Kevin Billson

Issue No 93 Autumn 2025