A total of 166 employers were fined for failing to comply with their workplace pensions duties in the last three months of 2014, The Pensions Regulator has said.
So far, since auto-enrolment started being rolled-out in 2012, 169 employers have been given £400 fines.
Charles Counsell, director of automatic enrolment for TPR, said: “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.”
He said this was a small number compared to the tens of thousands of businesses which have complied with auto-enrolment, but warned the number of fines could increase.
“With the mass market roll-out of auto-enrolment to large numbers of small businesses in the coming months, we expect to see an increase in how often we need to use our powers,” Mr Counsell said.
Although the vast majority of employers have completed their duties on or ahead of time, he said TPR was still seeing a small minority that required the additional nudge of a notice.
A total of 1,139 compliance notices were issued in the last quarter of 2014 instructing employers to remedy a contravention of one or more of their duties or risk a fine or further action.
The regulator said a significant number of these notices were sent to employers who had missed their deadline to submit their declaration.
Depending on the seriousness of an employer’s failure to comply with auto-enrolment rules, The Pensions Regulator can fine them up to £10,000 for each day of the failure.
Background |
The roll-out of auto-enrolment started in October 2012 with the largest employers, and is expected to last until 2018. Approximately 30,000 medium-ssized employers who staged in April-July reached their deadline to complete their declaration of compliance by the start of December 2014. |
Adviser view
Mark Pemberthy, director for London-based JLT Employee Benefits, said: “The rate of increase in auto-enrolment non-compliance is a concern.
“TPR is clearly taking a harder line with employers who fail to complete all the technicalities of auto-enrolment on time, which highlights the need for SMEs to face this challenge early and get the right support to comply fully, especially if they are already behind the ideal timetable.”
