So, your Workplace Pension Scheme is up and running smoothly, with the April 2019 increase in contributions taken care of? The next responsibility you have is the re-enrolment and re-declaration duty which must happen every three years.
Re-enrolment is when employees who have left your pension scheme must be enrolled back in. You must then prove to the Pensions Regulator that you have completed your duties with a re-declaration of compliance. These actions are your legal responsibility and you can be fined if you don’t act.
The members of your scheme who need to be re-enrolled are those who:
- Left the scheme more than 12 months before the re-enrolment date
- Are aged between 22 and the state pension age
- Earn over the earnings threshold (£10,000 a year)
How to carry out re-enrolment
After assessing which employees should be re-enrolled into your scheme, you must allocate a re-enrolment date within a six-month window. The window extends for three months either side of the third anniversary of your staging date. You can choose a date which aligns with the start of your financial year or avoids a particularly busy time of the year.
The date you decide upon applies to ALL employees and cannot be postponed. When you have determined which people are eligible, they must be re-enrolled into your scheme within six weeks of your enrolment date.
What next?
Within six weeks of the re-enrolment date, it is your legal duty to write to every employee to inform them that you have re-enrolled them. Your pension provider is likely to have letter templates that you can use.
What is re-declaration?
Even if you have no employees to re-enrol into your scheme, all employers must complete the re-declaration of compliance to inform the Pensions Regulator that your re-enrolment obligations are complete. The re-declaration must happen within five months of the third anniversary of the staging date.
More auto-enrolment responsibilities
As well as regular record-keeping, there are other ongoing duties to be carried out:
- Assess employees every pay period
- Enrol those who become eligible
- Pay the correct contributions into the pension
- Manage opt-out requests and refunds
Re-enrolment is a cyclical process and three years will come around again before you know it, so make sure your accounting payroll software is able to make the necessary changes to take the strain from your workload.
The team at CRM is happy to answer any of your auto-enrolment workplace pension queries. Call the friendly team on 01865 379272.
