As you will be aware, from 6 April 2016 contracting out of the additional part of the State Pension ceases and a new single tier State Pension will replace the existing two-tier arrangement.
This means that there will be no contracted out earnings to submit on your interfaces to MyCSP from 1 April 2016 onwards.
To avoid significant technical development, we are not making any changes to the interface format at this stage; instead please ensure that the contracted out earnings field is submitted as £0.00 where the data you are submitting is for the month of April 2016 or later.
If MyCSP receives an interface containing anything other than £0.00 in this field for data from 1 April 2016 or later, we will replace the submitted data with £0.00 in all cases.
Please note that this does not affect any interface data yet to be submitted in respect of pay periods prior to 1 April 2016. If you are still submitting data in respect of these periods, please continue to provide details of contracted out earnings as before.
Submitting timely and accurate data to MyCSP helps them to provide your employees with timely and accurate information about their Civil Service Pension, including retirement and leaver details and annual benefit statements.
The Civil Service Pensions website, guides and member letters will be updated from 6 April 2016 to remove references to contracting out. As advised previously, you should prepare to handle any queries that your employees have about the change, by ensuring you have read the information provided by DWP.
Employees with queries about the State Pension changes, including removal of the NI rebate, should be directed to their usual HR / Payroll contact in the first instance and signposted to the following sources of further information:
A news item will be published on the Civil Service Pensions website on 6 April to tell members about the cessation of contracting out; and pensioners are being informed via their annual pension newsletter. The scheme manager (Cabinet Office) will write to all active members by 6 July to formally disclose the change.
Please do not forward this EPN to employees.
If you have a question about the distribution of EPNs contact employerpensionnotice@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
You can find electronic copies of the Employer Pension Guide, all current EPNs and forms on our website.
This notice is for employers and should not be issued to scheme members.
If members have a question about their pension they can find information on this website or by contacting MyCSP.