Auto Enrolment

SMEs are now approaching their staging dates for Auto Enrolment. The Pensions Regulator has started to issue fines to companies who have not submitted the correct returns or have not followed the Auto Enrolment process properly. You should have received a letter from the Pensions Regulator and been given a staging date.

Auto Enrolment has been in place for a while now and requires UK Employers to enrol employees who meet certain criteria into a workplace pension scheme and also contribute towards it. Employees who have at least one employee will need to carry out a number of duties to comply with the rules around automatic enrolment.

By October 2018, ALL employers will be required to offer workplace pension schemes to eligible employees. Seeing that Auto Enrolment is automatic for employees but not for employers, the employer is required to assess each employee, communicate with employees about the process and provide an eligible pension scheme for them to join. There are also ongoing monitoring requirements for employees who may become eligible in the future or who initially opt out of automatic enrolment into the scheme.

If you haven’t acted yet or are not sure where to start, get in touch so that we can support and advise you through the process. Auto Enrolment sits naturally alongside payroll services and we would be happy to discuss managing both of these overheads for you.