Your staging date is when the automatic enrolment duties come into force for your business. On this date you must assess your workforce in order to know which staff must be automatically enrolled and which staff have a right to opt in or join your pension scheme. By this stage, you should have the necessary systems in place to generate this information automatically.
It is possible to use postponement on your staging date to delay automatic enrolment for some or all staff for up to three months. This means you won’t need to assess them to identify what duties you have for them until the last day of the postponement period, at which point you must automatically enrol any who are eligible.
You will also need to make a declaration to the pensions regulator taking account of everyone who worked for you on your staging date. The declaration will include details of how many people were automatically enrolled, how many were already in an existing pension scheme you provide, and what you did for anyone else in your employment. You’ll still need to complete your declaration even if you didn’t have to automatically enrol any of your staff.
At staging or when postponement ends, your key duties are to:
- Automatically enrol all staff who are eligible and make them active members of your pension scheme – you have 6 weeks from your staging date (or the day after postponement) to do this.
- Write to each member of staff to tell them how automatic enrolment affects them, or that you have postponed them – you have 1 month from your staging date to do this.
- Submit a declaration online to tell the pensions regulator how you’ve complied with your duties – you have 5 months from your staging date to do this.
This is the eighth installment in a series of articles regarding auto enrolment as detailed on our Employer Action Plan. Previous installments detailed below:
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For more information on pensions or to discuss your auto enrolment action plan please contact us.