Bride's final months marred by pension stress

She was marrying the love of her life and could not stop smiling. But behind the scenes this 27-year-old smiling bride was dealing with terminal illness, made more stressful by a pensions struggle with her former employer.

Caoimhe Jennings has now received a lump sum, but only after her MP raised the matter directly with the prime minister, in the House of Commons, on the day she got married.

Her MP believes there are thousands of people in similar positions, who will not all be able to get the same advocacy.

The pension administrators, Capita, say they are "sincerely sorry for the distress this situation has caused" and that the case was affected by an inherited backlog.

Caoimhe was diagnosed with a brain tumour in October 2025 after an optician noticed bleeding behind her eye.

She has since had chemotherapy, thirty rounds of radiotherapy, and two operations to help fluid drain from her brain, and has been told she has months to live.

Through all this she has had another battle on her hands: trying to access her ill health retirement pension from her former employer, the HMRC.

Her husband Ollie said they spent hours on the phone and exchanged many emails, but that HMRC submitted paperwork to Civil Service Pensions and then Capita.

He believes it was a data transfer between civil service pensions and Capita on 1 December that seems to have caused the issue.

"We spent hours on the phone with them and originally they said that it was all fine and it would be treated as a priority and to expect more correspondence closer to her retirement date in January (2026)," he said.

"But that wasn't actually the case. So on 12 January we rang Capita again and after four hours on hold we managed to speak to somebody. That request has never actually got through."

The couple, who live in Claudy, County Londonderry, said they have now received a lump sum but it is not correct and they believe they are owed more money possibly up to £15,000.

They raised the issue with their MP, Gregory Campbell from the DUP, who directly asked the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer about it in the Commons.

The couple believe that but for Campbell's intervention they might still be waiting.

The MP said: "Within twenty minutes of raising it at PMQs I had Capita on the phone to see what they could do to help.

"But the problem is there are many thousands of people in a similar position and they can't all rely on the fortunate position that I just happened to be in where their MP can get a prime minister's question and then people spring into action.

"There has to be a way now of getting this cleared so people don't have to go through this."

In response to a query from BBC News NI, a Capita representative said: "We are sincerely sorry for the distress this situation has caused.

"We can confirm that we have been in direct contact with the member and their representative to share our apologies directly, and that payments have now been finalised.

"This case was unfortunately affected by the backlog that Capita inherited when we took on administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme in December 2025.

"We have been working through this backlog and are prioritising ill-health retirements and hardship cases, supported by additional resourcing in partnership with the Cabinet Office."

Ollie said the stress was "the last thing we needed on top of Caoimhe's diagnosis".

Caoimhe, meanwhile is focusing on the positives: "I can't believe how kind people have been since I was diagnosed. It's unbelievable.

"I'm trying to stay as positive as I can. I'm hopeful that the radiotherapy and the chemotherapy have halted the growth of my tumour.

"Fingers crossed it works out well enough and I have as much time as I can."