Company directors and LLP partners could be exempt from auto-enrolment requirements under proposals put forward by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The consultation – Technical Changes to Automatic Enrolment – proposes exempting from auto-enrolment director only companies where two or more directors have contracts of employment. The DWP is also asking whether companies should be given the discretion to exempt directors from the duty to enroll where they have a contract of employment with the company.
The DWP says self-employed LLP members may be deemed to be ‘workers’ for the purposes of employment law, following a recent case in the Supreme Court, Clyde & Co LLP v Bates van Winkelhof.
It is now proposing that discretion be given for LLPs to be exempt from auto-enrolment employer duties towards genuine partners.
The DWP is also changing the limit for the exception to the employer auto-enrolment duty where an employer has reasonable grounds to believe a worker has transitional protection rights in relation to the Lifetime Allowance to reflect the new £1m figure that comes in from April 2016.
The Government is also consulting on simplifying the process for the re-declaration of compliance and also of removing prescriptive conditions for the bringing forward of staging dates. It notes that a substantial proportion of those employers staging in future will have no eligible employees, although many will have employees entitled to opt in.
The consultation closes next week.