Last week the Pensions Regulator reported a total of 21,303 employers have now registered as having complied with their auto-enrolment obligations, with 4.03m employees now auto-enrolled into schemes. A further 4.4m employees within these organisations are not eligible for auto-enrolment. But employers have up to five months from their staging date to provide information on automatic enrolment, meaning it TPR will not have a clear picture of the extent of compliance of the May 2014 peak until the end of October.
LEBC divisional director, group savings and investments Glynn Jones says: “We are heartened by the general willingness of UK plc to join in with this savings revolution.
“But these latest stats do not include figures from May to July stagers. We are hearing a simple question about this grouping; where are they? We have been approached by three non-stagers in the last week. Have we arrived at the ‘capacity crunch’ or the place where employers don’t have HR departments, financial directors or IFAs to push the process along, or access to The Pensions Regulator’s assistance? Do they think that they can get away with it?
“With the Regulator playing such a positive role in the success of auto-enrolment, is it now becoming viewed as a voluntary legislation, or one without such tight time deadlines, that employers can choose to meet at an approximate date?
“The Pensions Regulator understands the challenges of a further 1.1m employers going through staging and acknowledges that the only way auto-enrolment can succeed practically is through payroll professionals – bookkeepers, accountants and payroll bureaus. We are inviting payroll professionals to develop their payroll offering to take advantage of this demand.”
