Overview – what will you have to do?

When is it happening?

Employers will be brought into the pension reforms in stages starting with the largest businesses and organisations.  Each employer’s staging date (the date from which the employer duties commence) is determined by the size of the PAYE scheme. The largest employers, those with more than 120,000 in the PAYE scheme, have a staging date of 1 October 2012. These will be followed by medium and small employers, staged in over a five year period until the scheme is fully implemented in 2017.

The staging date will be based on the size of the PAYE scheme as of 1 April 2012. The Pensions Regulator will notify each employer 12 months prior to its staging date and again 3 months before the staging date.

You can check your approximate staging date here

Employers will be required to:

• Automatically enrol eligible workers into a qualifying pension scheme
• Manage opt outs for workers who choose to opt out
• Facilitate opt in for qualifying workers
• Contribute to the scheme for eligible workers
• Provide specific information to different categories of workers

These are referred to as employer duties. For further information click on the links below.

• Who do the employer duties apply to?
• Do the employer duties apply if you supply limited company contractors?
• Different categories of workers
• What contributions have to be made into the pension scheme?
• Enrolment into a pension scheme
• Using postponement
• Assessing your workers
• Assessing workers’ earnings
• Selecting a qualifying pension scheme
• Where can you get further advice on pension schemes?

Further information and guidance from TPR can be found here.