Overview
- Angela MacDonald, HMRC deputy CEO, has been appointed to oversee an urgent recovery plan that prioritizes bereavement, ill‑health and hardship cases.
- More than 150 additional staff are being deployed, taking the scheme’s workforce to over 650 to clear correspondence backlogs and speed up processing.
- Ministers have authorised interest‑free support, with most emergency loans capped at £5,000 and up to £10,000 available in exceptional cases, to be administered by departments.
- Capita and the Cabinet Office issued a formal apology after reports of portal access failures, incomplete records, long call waits, and delayed quotes and payments.
- Capita targets restoring service for the most urgent cases by the end of February, unions say bereavement processing should be fully restored by 12 February, and further IT functionality is expected by March as scrutiny highlights prior PAC warnings and union claims that 8,500 newly retired workers were hit and that the backlog will take months to clear.