Close to 170 employers were fined for failing to comply with their auto-enrolment duties by the end of the year, after a surge of penalties in the final quarter in what amounts to a major ramping up of the clampdown on non-compliance by The Pensions Regulator.
A total of 169 fines were issued, including 166 £400 fixed penalty notices in the last three months of the year, while the number of compliance notices also rose, with 1,139 issued.
A significant number of the notices issued in this period were to employers who had missed their deadline to submit their declaration of compliance.
Approximately 30,000 medium sized employers - those with approximately 62 to 149 workers - who staged in April to July had reached their deadline to complete their declaration by the start of December.
The regulator warned that the number of employers approaching the date when they must confirm that they have complied with new workplace pensions duties is now beginning to rise significantly as smaller and micro employers are staged in over the coming two years.
This year it expects to see more employers who, despite the message to prepare early, leave it too late or do not comply at all.
Separately, The Pensions Regulator announced it has reached an £8.5m settlement with two Russian companies following an investigation into the Carrington Wire Defined Benefit Pension Scheme.
In November 2012, the regulator issued a warning notice to three potential targets - including Russian-domiciled PAO Severstal and OAO Severstal-Metiz - indicating its intention to issue contribution notices in connection with the scheme.
The matter was passed to the regulator’s determinations panel in June 2014 and an oral hearing was scheduled to take place this month, but an offer was made by the Russian companies to pay the sum of £8.5m to the scheme
Charles Counsell, the regulator’s director of automatic enrolment, stated: “My message to all employers is that failing to declare within five months of your staging date means you risk being fined, which is why we recommend you start your automatic enrolment planning and preparation 12 months before staging.
“It appears some medium employers waited for a prompt from the regulator before completing their automatic enrolment duties. Employers must complete all their duties including making their declaration of compliance to The Pensions Regulator.”
Mr Counsell added that with the mass market roll out of auto-enrolment to large numbers of small businesses in the coming months, he expects to see an increase in how often the regulator needs to use its powers.
peter.walker@ft.com
