CS Employers Q1 2025 update
In this quarterly update for employers, we’re bringing together all the critical information and actions shared between January 2025 and March 2025 in one place.
In this quarterly update for employers, we’re bringing together all the critical information and actions shared between January 2025 and March 2025 in one place.
If you have a question regarding the pension scheme the best place to start is with the available guidance in the ‘Employer’ section of the Civil Service Pensions website. This includes the Employer Pension Guide and Employer Pension Notices (EPNs). The Employer Pension Guide in particular provides employers with guidance on what action to take and what processes to follow for a wide range of scenarios.
Also included on the website are a number of publications, such as scheme booklets, which provide information on a number of frequently asked questions you may receive from your members. The search bar on the website can also be used to retrieve both member and employer guidance on specific topics.
If you’ve been unable to answer your query using the above resources, the first point of contact for all employer queries should be the employer helpline. The contact number for this line is 0300 123 1040. You'll be asked to enter a five digit passcode, which will have been communicated to you in a separate correspondence from our Enquiry Centre. You'll need to wait to be asked before entering the passcode for it to be accepted. If you need to obtain the passcode, please email ERMExternalMailbox@mycsp.co.uk .
The timing of your end-of-year activity is critical to the production of annual statements (ABS and PSS) and completion of Resource Accounts (RA) and Annual Assurance Statement (AAS) exercises. This EPN contains a reminder of the deadlines for submitting your end-of-year data in 2025.
Actions
HM Treasury have advised that Resource Accounts Remuneration reports should be published before summer recess, which means that the time for MyCSP to provide information to employers is very short.
The 2015 Remedy has had significant impacts on this exercise. As a result, we are issuing guidance earlier than normal.
To ensure that employers can meet this deadline, we must adjust our processes, and we will utilise the data provided by employers as at the end of January 2025 with calculations projected to the end of March for the remaining two months.
Given the very tight deadlines we are all working to this year, it is essential that employers only request pension information for people whose remuneration will be disclosed in their accounts.
All employers are required to complete the Annex13A listing all board members in scope and provide to MyCSP by 28 February 2025.
All employers are obliged to provide any expected changes on the annex to pay etc. which are not on the January interface, but which relate to the period from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 (for example, joiners or leavers).
This EPN is to advise that, as part of the 2015 Remedy (McCloud), we are required to provide impacted members with a choice of pension benefits for their remediable service (service during the Remedy Period: 1 April 2015 - 31 March 2022). This applies to members who retired before October 1, 2023, and had taken remediable service benefits at that time.
The members impacted are partially or formally retired members still in employment and fully retired members (details below).
Impacted members will therefore be receiving an Immediate Choice Remediable Service Statement (RSS) pack and will be given an alternative benefit option and additional supporting information to help make their decision. (Note: Members who tapered into alpha during the Remedy period will be given two options to choose from.)
The RSS packs will start to be issued to members from the end of January 2025.
Further details and Immediate Choice RSS FAQs can be found here.
MyCSP had a deadline to deliver Annual Benefit Statements to all members by 31 August 2024. This has been successfully completed for 98% of the overall member population; however, due to the impact of Remedy, there are a small
The Legal & General “Manage Your Scheme” system will be decommissioned by the end of 2025. To replace this, Legal & General has developed an enhanced system called “My Scheme Updates” (MySU).
Your payroll will not be able to submit files (e.g., new joiner or contribution) for the DC Section unless they use MySU.
We have recently seen an increase of opt out cases where automatic refunds have been issued via payroll for members who are outside of 1 month of being enrolled into the scheme.
Please refer to the Employer Pension Guide for full details of the process which must be followed;
5.9.6 The process for refunding members contributions and assessing further actions needed was revised following the introduction of automatic enrolment. The current process is detailed in Annex 5D.
Please note: the employer should only give a refund if they have automatically enrolled the employee who is opting out and received the opting out form within 1 month of the start of the opting out period. In all other cases, the employer must follow the process for ‘NO’ on the Opt Out form as advised in Annex 5D.
April 2025
May 2025
June 2025
Keep an eye on the year ahead: The 2024 online scheme year planner is available now.
Have you heard of Pension Power? Pension Power provides members with all the facts they need about their Civil Service Pension via Teams in just one hour. Its free, sessions run daily and we provide tailored sessions for New Joiners too.
Coming this February. In this edition of Hot Topics, we’ll be focussing on Resource Accounts. We’ll be joined by our Training team, who will guide you through what to do if you get involved in this exercise.