Employers who first set up their business between 1 July 2017 and 30 September 2017 are being reminded that they must have automatically enrolled their employees into a workplace pension scheme before 1 February 2018.
Auto-enrolment was first introduced in October 2012, and all employers must enrol any eligible workers aged 22 and above earning £10,000 a year or more into an appropriate pension scheme by their unique staging date.
A company’s unique staging date can be determined by their PAYE reference number – but for many businesses, this date might be sooner than expected.
In fact, any businesses defined as ‘new’ for purposes of auto-enrolment have only a matter of days to go in order to meet their workplace pension obligations.
This affects any businesses who have PAYE first payable between 1 July 2017 and 30 September 2017.
Meanwhile, new employers who first set up shop on or after 1 October 2017 will not yet have a staging date.
Instead, these businesses will immediately have auto-enrolment duties and will need to begin enrolling new members of staff from the first day they begin working at the company – unless they decide to take advantage of The Pensions Regulator’s (TPR) three month postponement period.
Businesses who need help with auto-enrolment are urged to seek specialist advice sooner rather than later.
