Scottish Public Pensions Agency - Electronic communications and pension recalculations: FOI release

Information requested

1) The number and % of communications submitted through Contact Us, or other electronic means, which are unanswered after 3 and 6 months, in each of the past 5 years. I am not counting an automated response acknowledging receipt as an answer.

2) Where individuals have a backdated payrise applied after their retiral, impacting on their final salary, the % of those whose retiral benefits have been recalculated to reflect the payrise - for each of the past 5 years.

Following a request for clarification, you confirmed this request is in relation to the NHS Pension Scheme and 'contact us' relates to all correspondence by email and web forms.

Response

1) The Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) estimates that carrying out such a review across the past five years would involve examining tens of thousands of cases across multiple systems. This would exceed the upper cost limit set out in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. We are therefore unable to provide the number and percentage of communications unanswered after 3 and 6 months as requested.

For context and explanation as to why we have had to apply Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, SPPA records all customer communications, whether received via webforms, email, telephone or post, as tasks within our pension administration system. These tasks are managed through standard workflows, and the completion of a task is taken to indicate that a response has been issued. However, the system does not record the original communication channel in a reportable format. As such, we are unable to isolate communications submitted specifically via “Contact Us” or other electronic means, as requested.

In addition, the system does not provide a mechanism to identify or report on communications that remained unanswered after defined time periods, such as 3 months or 6 months. While task completion is recorded, extracting information on tasks that remained open beyond these timeframes would require a manual review of a large volume of individual records.

For completeness, we can confirm that following a recent system update, we are now able to produce limited management information on overall contact volumes for approximately the past six months. However, this information does not include response times, outcomes, or the status of communications at 3- or 6-month intervals and is therefore not directly comparable to your request.

We recognise the importance of being able to report on communication handling and timeliness. Work is currently underway to implement improved systems which are expected to enhance our ability to capture and report on communication channels, response status, and time-based performance metrics in future.

2) SPPA estimates that to provide an answer to this question, it would involve reviewing thousands of cases over the requested five-year period, and the cost of locating, retrieving and providing this information would exceed the upper cost limit of £600 set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Accordingly, we are unable to provide the information requested.

As before, for context and explanation as to why we have had to apply Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, SPPA carries out revisions to pension awards for a range of reasons. However, the underlying cause of each revision (for example, whether it relates to a backdated pay award applied after retiral) is not recorded in a way that can be reported on. All revision activity is recorded under a single “revision” category within our systems, with no further breakdown by reason.

As a result, we are unable to identify and extract the specific subset of cases required to answer your request. To do so would require a manual review of a large number of individual pension records in order to determine the reason for each revision.

While we are unable to supply the specific data you have requested, we can confirm that as of 23 June 2026, there are 15,243 revision cases currently outstanding.

We also note that meaningful completion or performance rates for revision work are not routinely reported. This is because such measures do not provide an accurate reflection of activity, given the complexity of revision cases. For example, some cases are dependent on wider programme activity, such as the implementation of remedy processing, which can affect timescales for completion.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.