Pensions regulator issued fines worth £69m in 2018

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Pensions regulator issued fines worth £69m in 2018

The Pensions Regulator issued fines worth £68.6m to employers who failed to comply with their pension duties in 2018 fiscal year.

This is a record in the value of penalties levied by the watchdog over the past five years, according to data released in a freedom of information request.

In 2018-19, TPR issued fixed penalty notices worth £14.9m and escalating penalty notices of £53.8m. These types of fines are mostly used for auto-enrolment.

Year

Fixed penalty notices

Escalating penalty notices

2014-15

£170,400

£22,500

2015-16

£873,200

£236,500

2016-17

£4,980,100

£7,682,500

2017-18

£11,548,700

£30,547,350

2018-19 (subject to audit)

£14,858,115

£53,768,808

A fixed penalty notice of £400 is issued to employers for failure to comply with a statutory notice or some specific employer duties.

Escalating penalty notices vary between £50 and £10,000 a day depending on size of the company and are issued if the employer still hasn’t complied with previous warnings.

According to TPR's latest compliance and enforcement quarterly bulletin, published last week (May 16), it has issued 80,385 fixed penalty notices and 21,520 escalating penalty notices since the introduction of auto-enrolment in 2012.

Despite the end of staging in 2017, employers need to comply with re-enrolment, which sees workers that previously opted out being put back into the qualifying pension scheme every three years.

TPR announced last month that it will start conduction short-notice inspections on employers suspected of not complying with their auto-enrolment duties.

The watchdog will check those who fail to put staff into a pension scheme or who make no, or incorrect, pension contributions.

maria.espadinha@ft.com

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