No sooner did you think that you had pension enrolment sorted than it’s time to re-enrol and re-declare. Wait… what?!
That’s right. Thousands of employers now need to complete their re-enrolment & re-declaration requirements for automatic enrolment. Importantly, not doing both stages could lead to legal action including fines!
What is Automatic Enrolment?
Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK, with more than one employee, must put certain staff into a workplace pension scheme and contribute towards it. This is called ‘Automatic Enrolment’.
What you need to do next depends on whether you are about to start your automatic enrolment duties or whether you are coming back for re-enrolment, having done this three years ago.
What is re-enrolment and re-declaration?
Every three years you need to re-enrol staff who either opted out of the pension scheme or reduced their contributions below the minimum criteria back in to an Auto Enrolment pension scheme. You also need to complete a re-declaration of compliance within five calendar months of the third anniversary of your staging date.
What happens if you don’t do this?
The Pensions Regulator has enforced this requirement to enroll, declare (and re-enroll/declare) and more than 283,000 employers have been subject to their actions. This has been for a variety of reasons including:
- not issuing statutory employee communication to workers
- failure to submit declaration of compliance forms on time or with the correct information
- membership and contribution payment issues
- ignoring their employer duties altogether
To date over 101,000 of these powers have carried monetary fines.
We’re working with Workplace Advice Group to advise on this
Workplace Advice Group is an expert team of automatic enrolment pensions advisers. They have a long-standing and ongoing relationship with The Pensions Regulator. Coupled with this their technical expertise means they are able to you resolve your regulatory issues quickly and efficiently, saving you thousands of pounds in fines along the way.
If you’re concerned about pensions matters and your obligations as an employer, we can introduce you to Workplace Advice Group. You’ll receive an initial free, no obligation conference call to determine what actions you need to take to get things right.
For more information you can contact Alison on 01803 469466.
