Automatic enrolment is a Government initiative to help more people save for later life through a pension scheme at work. In the past, many workers missed out on valuable pension benefits, because their employer didn’t offer them a pension or they didn’t apply to join their company’s pension scheme.

Any company running a PAYE department has an obligation to get itself registered with the Pension Regulator as part of the Auto Enrolment Pension requirements, regardless if any of its employees opt in for the pension services or not.

Failure to register with the Pension Regulator within a limited time frame as advised by the HMRC may lead to heavy fines being imposed by the HMRC.

Once the company is registered with the Pension Regulator, it then needs to also register itself with a defined contribution workplace pension scheme provider such as NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) which was set up to facilitate automatic enrolment as part of the government’s workplace pension reforms under the Pensions Act 2008. There are other workplace pension scheme providers and a company may choose whichever it prefers.

Once a company registers with NEST successfully, it then need to register all of its employees with NEST individually. The company also needs to write to all of its staff if they would like to join the government’s pension scheme.

If an employee chooses to opt out, then their confirmation must be kept safe as it may be requested for viewing by the Auto Enrolment Pension department at any given stage of his employment within the company.

If an employee chooses to opt in, then the company needs to submit their monthly payroll (RTI) as normal as well as submit a monthly pension summary statements to NEST as well. The payments towards both the NIC/Tax and for the Pension needs to be made separately to the respective departments.

At Silver Tree Accountancy, we provide professional services for all areas i.e. from assisting in registration of a company for PAYE services up until submitting monthly/weekly RTI reports as well submitting monthly/weekly Pension reports to the relevant authorities,