Has it been three years already?!
Every three years employers must put certain members of staff back into an automatic enrolment pension scheme. This is called ‘re-enrolment’.
Re-enrolment duties must be completed approximately three years after your automatic enrolment staging date. You will also need to complete a re-declaration of compliance to tell The Pensions Regulator how you have completed your duties.
Re-enrolment and the re-declaration of compliance are legal duties and if you don’t act you could be fined.
Your re-enrolment steps:
1) Choose a re-enrolment date
You have a six month ‘window’ from which you can choose a re-enrolment date. This window starts three months before and ends three months after the third anniversary of your automatic enrolment staging date.
2) Assess and re-enrol staff
You need to assess staff who have:
- asked to leave (opted out of) your pension scheme
- left your pension scheme after the end of the opt-out period
- stayed in your pension scheme – but chosen to reduce the level of pension contributions to below the minimum level, and who meet the age and earnings criteria to be re-enrolled.
You can leave out any staff member who, on your chosen re-enrolment date:
- is already in the pension scheme you use for automatic enrolment
- is aged 21 or under
- is at state pension age (SPA) or over
- has not yet met the age and earnings criteria for automatic enrolment, or has been postponed.
3) Write to staff you have re-enrolled
You must do this within six weeks of your re-enrolment date. It is your legal duty to write to each member of staff you have put back into your pension scheme.
4) Complete your re-declaration of compliance
You must do this within five months of the third anniversary of your staging date
Completing and submitting your re-declaration of compliance is a legal duty to show how you have fulfilled your employer duties for re-enrolment. You must complete your re-declaration even if you don’t have any staff to put back into your pension scheme. You can start your re-declaration at any time after you have re-enrolled staff, or as soon as you work out you have no staff to put into your pension scheme.
We recommend that you don’t leave your re-declaration until the last day to complete as some information may take time to prepare.
Ongoing duties after re-enrolment
Each time you pay your staff you should carry out the following ongoing duties:
- monitor the age and earnings of your staff to see if you need to put any of them into a pension scheme
- manage requests to join and leave your pension scheme
- keep accurate records of what you have done
- pay money into a pension scheme if you have put staff into it.