With the membership of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme now reaching two million, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of members contacting us either via our contact centre or by email. This means that some members may have regrettably experienced difficulties when trying to get in touch with us recently. At Teachers’ Pensions ensuring our customers have the best possible experience remains our priority and we are continuing to make improvements to how we deal with the complexity of enquiries we receive from members whether they choose to contact us by phone or online via our website, Facebook or Twitter.  We’ve already begun to add more agents in our telephone Contact Centre to answer your queries and soon we’ll have dedicated resource to engage with you via our Facebook and Twitter social media channels.

The digital journey remains at the heart of what we do as this allows us to provide the most comprehensive service in terms of handling queries, providing guidance and resolving queries in real time and in turn allows members to engage with their pension to best effect. As members will appreciate, we do prioritise certain calls, particularly members or their family contacting us in connection with a bereavement or where a member may be suffering serious ill-health.

We are sure that members will welcome this approach and we will provide updates via our website and newsletter in the coming months.  In the meantime the options members have for contacting us are by telephone, email or social media.  If members wish to contact us by email, they need to have registered for a My Pension Online account.  We’ve improved the process as members no longer require their Teachers’ Pensions Reference number (in most cases). All they need is their National insurance number and an email address (we recommend a personal one).

All of these improvements have been discussed with, and agreed by, the Department for Education and shared with our stakeholders, including the Teachers’ Pension Scheme Pension Board.