Re-enrolment has started for many businesses and the final group of micro-businesses will be enrolled. 

The Pension Regulator has highlighted that compliance remains positive; over 370,000 employers have enrolled workers and over 300,000 workers have been re-enrolled, but it did issue a reminder that businesses need to ensure they submit their declaration of compliance on time. Failure to comply may result in fines and that these will be pursued. One of the results could be a county court judgement for failing to pay automatic enrolment fines.

A few cases were mentioned in the last Quarterly Compliance and Enforcement Bulletin issued by the Pensions Regulator. It has also been highlighted that pubs, clubs and restaurants were businesses with higher risk of non-compliance.

New employers also are required to enroll workers into a suitable scheme. The basic rule is that all new employers between 1 April 2012 up to and including 30 September 2017 will have staging dates between 1 May 2017 and 1 February 2018.

Many have already received communication from the Pensions Regulator. The change that practitioners and your clients need to know is that from October 2017 new employers will have an instantaneous duty to enroll workers. More in future issues of In Practice.