I contacted you a year ago after you wrote about teachers not receiving their pensions because of assumptions that they were dead. I had received six letters essentially informing me that my payments would be stopped unless I confirmed that I was still alive.
Recently the payments did stop, only this time I had not received any letter. It only arrived after I called Teachers’ Pensions, dated six weeks earlier.
I am anxious in case I am away when the next letter arrives. The knowledge that pension payments are actually stopped is very scary as this is my main income.
MW, Port Talbot
I featured your case, anonymously, in an exposé in January last year. I’d discovered that retired teachers were receiving annual threats to stop their pensions unless they confirmed that their “circumstances have not changed”. That is a polite way of stating that they have been matched to an entry in the register of deaths and have four weeks to prove they are alive before their income is stopped. The letters don’t mention death, or the deadline, which the Department for Education (DfE) says is “to avoid causing upset”. Partners of deceased teachers were receiving similar letters demanding euphemistically to know if they had taken a new lover.
Madness lies in the fact that even after a pensioner has confirmed that they are not dead, their name is for ever more linked to the deceased stranger in the death register who triggered the match. So, every year, they have to reiterate that it is not them.
The DfE promised me back then that it would undertake a review of its procedures. But all that has changed, it seems, is that pensions are being stopped without the courtesy of a warning letter. The situation is farcical and I hope repeated exposure will shame the DfE into changing its procedures before October, when the contract for administering Teachers’ Pensions is transferred from Capita to Tata Consultancy Services.
You’ve been informing Teachers’ Pensions since 2020 that you’re not whoever it is they’ve matched you to. If you’re away from home when the letter arrives or if it goes astray in the post, the first you’ll know of it is that your income stops. In one similar case I investigated, the DfE agreed to decouple the pensioner from her dead namesake, but they refuse to do this for anyone else, including you, because it would cost time and money.
The DfE tells me it did carry out a review after my articles and the review concluded that the process was just fine as it is. And why is the process necessary? To shield families from “financial hardship”, according to a spokesperson. The logic is that bereaved families would have to return any pension payments made after a beneficiary had died. That’s the only part of it that makes sense. The DfE confirms a match on the death register doesn’t even have to be exact for a link to be made in perpetuity: there could be a differently spelled name, or a different address or date of birth.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which regulates data protection, told me that continuing to chase an individual based on details they have confirmed are inaccurate may be a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Organisations have a responsibility under the law to ensure the personal information they hold on an individual is accurate and up to date. If an organisation becomes aware that information is incorrect, it should take all reasonable steps to correct it,” said a spokesperson. “Organisations should also exercise empathy and common sense when receiving information from individuals, particularly of this nature.”
The DfE dismisses this. The only concession it will make is that it may consider sending communications electronically. I suggest you and any other affected pensioners complain to the ICO, which can investigate potential GDPR breaches.
LS is another teacher facing hardship because of Teachers’ Pensions, in this case via the incompetence of Capita, which administers the scheme. She has had to take early retirement owing to multiple sclerosis and expected her pension to start within three months of her final day at work. However, a month before her salary ceases, she’s still waiting for Capita to send the remediable service statement, without which the pension can’t be processed.
“Every time I ring Teachers’ Pensions, I speak to a different adviser, none of whom show any empathy and all of whom give me a different explanation for the delay,” she said. “I have bills to pay next month and am increasingly anxious that I’ll have no income. I was forced to retire to help manage my condition, but Teachers’ Pensions is making it worse.”
There’s no empathy in Teachers’ Pensions’ response to me either. It told me baldly that (by a remarkable coincidence) the necessary paperwork is now on its way and LS’s retirement calculation will be finalised and backdated within 10 working days once she has taken financial advice and confirmed her choice of options.
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