Partner Article

Auto Enrolment Staging Dates & Penalties

While the process of Auto Enrolment began on April 1st 2012 it is far from over. “Staging” as it’s called began with the nation’s largest companies and has been working its way gradually down the scale. By 1st April 2017 employers with 49 workers or fewer will all need to have started or completed the process of staging.

Potential Penalties for Missing the Staging Date

Failure to comply with staging dates may result in one or more of the following penalties.

• Issuance of a Compliance Notice, Improvement Notice or an Unpaid Contributions Notice. These notices inform the employer they are in default and must work to promptly achieve compliance.
• Estimation of unpaid contributions, calculation of interest and the taking of appropriate steps to collect contributions that have not been made on behalf of trustees or auto enrolment pension schemes providers.
• If an employer has been issued one of the above statutory notices and failed to comply, or if there is evidence the employer has otherwise breached their auto enrolment obligations one of the following penalty notices may be issued.
• Fixed Penalty Notice – Employer must pay a fine amounting to £400.
• Escalating Penalty Notice – Employer will be required to pay £50 to £10,000 on a daily basis for every day non-compliance continues (dependent on the number of employees)
• Prohibitive Recruitment Conduct Penalty – Maximum fine of £5,000.
• Civil Penalty Notice – A CPN can be as much as £5,000 per employee and/or £50,000 per employer.

Failure to pay a fine may result in the Regulator initiating legal action. Continued non-compliance may ultimately result in criminal prosecution and up to 2 years in prison.

Auto Enrolment can be one more headache a business owner doesn’t need.

Let National Auto Enrolment Helpline auto enrolment providers assist you with auto enrolment setup and compliance and keep the regulators at bay.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Junaed Sheiakh .