The Department for Education has agreed to settle out of court with teachers' union NASUWT, which brought a claim on behalf of teachers who had to wait months, sometimes years, for their cash-equivalent transfer values. 

NASUWT took legal action on behalf of 83 teachers, represented by lawyers at Leigh Day, before the government agreed to settle with them. 

The Teachers' Pension Scheme has been beset by delays. The administration changed from Capita to Tata Consultancy Services at the start of this month. The 10-year contract worth about £234m was awarded in 2023, with Tata originally due to take over in October last year. That same month, headteachers' union NAHT already wrote to the DfE urging it to “take immediate steps” to address delays at Teachers’ Pension around divorce-related CETVs among others. 
   

   

These efforts were apparently fruitless until legal action was taken. 

“We gave the DfE ample time and opportunity to resolve this matter but their failure to address this satisfactorily left us with no choice but to take legal action. Our members have won justice and this is a clear and important victory for teachers who were badly let down,” said NASUWT general secretary Matt Wrack. 
 
The settlement between the government and teachers covers claims estimated at around £750,000. The DfE agreed to provide compensation to affected teachers, issue outstanding CETVs and implement urgent improvements to TPS administration to prevent future delays, according to NASUWT.
  
Leigh Day partner Ryan Bradshaw said: “We are delighted to have secured an amicable settlement on behalf of our clients, which would not [have] been possible without the support of their workplace union. It is a shame that we were required to issue claims in order to ensure our clients obtained the compensation they were entitled to.”

Bradshaw added: “This regrettable situation has once again highlighted the issues of maladministration that arise all too often when public services are outsourced to private providers.”
 
One of the teachers who participated in the claim, Wendy Dopheide, said she enquired about applying for a CETV from Teachers' Pensions in summer 2023 but heard nothing back for several weeks. This meant she turned 60 and had to pay for this information. Her subsequent messages and complaints were either met with “stony silence or platitudes about the delays”, she added.

The settlement comes against a background of severe administration failures at the Civil Service Pension Scheme, which moved from MyCSP to Capita last December. A large backlog of cases at CSPS has meant many payments from the scheme have been delayed by months. The latest update shows there are still 20,600 cases that are more than three months old. The National Audit Office plans to investigate the transfer of the administration contract.

Ministers have said they are looking at bringing the pensions administration of CSPS in-house, amid pressure to do so by the PCS, which now has the backing of the Trades Union Congress. NASUWT has said it is working with the TUC and other public sector unions to try to achieve in-house administration of all public service pension schemes.