Escalating penalties issued by the Pensions’ Regulator for auto enrolment failures quadruples.

Between January and March 2016, The Pensions Regulator issued 96 escalating penalty notices to employers who failed to comply with auto enrolment rules, a quadrupling of the number issued in October – December 2016.

Given that there have been 127 escalating penalty notices issued since auto-enrolment was introduced in April 2012, we can see that 120 of them have been issued in the last 6 months, which is due to the rising number of employers using auto-enrolment, including smaller businesses.

Fixed Penalty Notices are Also Increasing

The Pensions’ Regulator issued 806 fixed penalty notices between January and March 2016, bringing the total issued since April 2012 to 2,234.

Although non-compliance is rising, it is still a very small percentage. Given the huge numbers of businesses involved in the auto-enrolment process, as the Pensions’ Minister Ros Altman says:

 “The aim of automatic enrolment is to get all employers setting up pension schemes for their staff. It is most encouraging to see that even the smaller employers are managing to do this, and the proportion facing enforcement action has stayed remarkably low.”

Indeed, the data suggests that more than 95% of the first small employers required to put their staff into a workplace pension have complied with the law.

For help and advice with auto enrolment, talk to us

As with all things relating to savings and pensions, including auto-enrolment, finding what is right for you and your circumstances is what we do best, here at PML Financial Services. So if you need help and advice, call us on 0121 693 0690, or contact us for an initial free, no obligation, chat.