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Frank Gallacher worked as a firefighter at Britain’s nuclear weapons headquarters for 35 years.
He tackled minor blazes at HM Naval Base, Clyde, which houses the country’s fleet of nuclear submarines armed with Trident missiles.
Fighting fires so close to high-grade weapons required specialist training – and increased the risks involved. “It was a physical job,” he says. “We had lots of drills and exercises.”
But when he came to retire aged 60, the £112,000 lump sum he had decided to draw did not arrive in his account – neither did the first instalment of his £1,370 a month pension.
Administrative blunders at the outsourcing giant Capita meant hundreds of retired Ministry of Defence firefighters like Mr Gallacher have faced long delays in receiving their pensions, while others have been underpaid.
He was left with no income for six months. “It was the most stressful period of my life,” he says. “I was penniless”.
In 2019, Capita won a £525m contract to run the Ministry of Defence’s fire and rescue service, which it renamed the Defence Fire and Rescue Project (DFRP).
The service’s pension scheme is not administered by Capita but by MyCSP, part of Equiniti, another outsourcing firm.
Capita admitted that it had supplied Equiniti with inaccurate employment data about some of the scheme’s 700 members. This error is understood to be the reason for the miscalculations and delays.
Mr Gallacher retired in February 2023, after having given Capita notice of his plans to do so in November 2022. But it wasn’t until August 2023 that he received his lump sum, and the pension payments a month later.
Fortunately, Mr Gallacher’s wife Helen, a retired school teacher, had a pension which they were forced to both survive on.
When the payments failed to arrive, he got in touch with Capita and continued to phone them “on a regular basis” to chase what he was owed.
“They kept saying it would happen, but it didn’t. I felt I was being stonewalled. I was absolutely livid.
“It was horrendous. I’ve worked hard for decades, and I gave them plenty of notice.”
Capita’s mistakes affect retired members of DFRP who fight fires on military bases in Britain and overseas. The work requires specialist equipment as conditions are especially hazardous given the proximity to ammunition or other military hardware.
The pensions of 219 members of the Unite union are being corrected. Some members are in the process of being compensated by Capita after a Cabinet Office investigation found the firm liable for the errors.
The union believes up to £400,000 of compensation could be awarded, but has urged members to pursue further redress by contacting the Pensions Ombudsman.