Automatic enrolment timescales
26 January 2012
The Department of Work and Pensions has issued a ministerial statement confirming the revised automatic enrolment timetable.
It will now take over five years from 1 October 2012 for all employers to become subject to the automatic enrolment requirements. However, for existing employers as at 1 April 2012, the period is 4½ years from 1 October 2012 (with those employers that have the smallest PAYE schemes or no PAYE scheme at all as at 1 April 2012 becoming subject to the new requirements on 1 April 2017).
For existing employers, the impact of the extended timetable is more limited than was indicated in the DWP’s November announcement. Only those existing employers with fewer than 250 people in their PAYE schemes on 1 April 2012 (rather than all those with under 3,000 people, as previously announced) are having their staging dates postponed; consequently, the table set out in this newsletter still stands for existing employers.
There is also some extension of the transitional period over which the contribution requirements for money purchase automatic enrolment schemes are to be phased in. Under the original proposals, an initial minimum contribution level was required, which was to be stepped up to a higher level on 1 October 2016, and then increased again (to the full money purchase qualifying scheme level) on 1 October 2017. These two “step-up” dates are each to be postponed by a year (changing them to 1 October 2017 and 1 October 2018 respectively).
A consultation document and draft regulations are set to follow, but in the meantime you can find the ministerial statement here.
