Posted: Thursday 26 January 2012
Clarification Of Auto-Enrolment Start Dates – New Timetable
I mentioned in my previous blog - Pension Changes Delay – that the Government were delaying the start date for small businesses and that a new timetable was to be published in January. Yesterday the Government did just that and the revised timetable setting out when employers of all sizes must start auto-enroling their staff in the workplace was published.
Employers with 250 or more employees will not face any changes in the date that they must start auto-enroling their staff and this will run from 1 October 2012 to 1 February 2014 depending on the number of employees employed with those employing 120,000 or more being required to auto-enrol from 1 October 2012.
For employers with 50 to 249 employees the start date will be from 1 April 2014 to 1 April 2015, again depending on the exact number of employees that are employed.
For employer with less than 50 employees the start date will be from 1 August 2015 to 1 April 2017 (although there is also a test tranche from 1 June 2015 to 30 June 2015 which is slightly out of sync).
The new table which has been published by the Department for Work and Pensions is as follows:-
| From | To | |
| 250 or more members | 1 October 2012 | 1 February 2014 |
| 50 to 249 members | 1 April 2014 | 1 April 2015 |
| Test tranche for less than 30 members | 1 June 2015 | 30 June 2015 |
| 30 to 49 members | 1 August 2015 | 1 October 2015 |
| Less than 30 members | 1 January 2016 | 1 April 2017 |
| Employers without PAYE schemes | 1 April 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Apr 2012 to Mar 2013 | 1 May 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Apr 2013 to Mar 2014 | 1 July 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Apr 2014 to Mar 2015 | 1 August 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Apr 2015 to Dec 2015 | 1 October 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Jan 2016 to Sep 2016 | 1 November 2017 |
- - - |
| New employers Oct 2016 to Jun 2017 | 1 January 2018 |
- - - |
| New employers Jul 2017 to Sep 2017 | 1 February 2018 |
- - - |
| New employers Oct 2017 | Immediate duty |
- - - |
The table below was the one that was previously published showing a breakdown for the start date for larger employers:-
|
120,000 or more |
1 October 2012 |
|
50,000-119,999 |
1 November 2012 |
|
30,000-49,999 |
1 January 2013 |
|
20,000-29,999 |
1 February 2013 |
|
10,000-19,999 |
1 March 2013 |
|
6,000-9,999 |
1 April 2013 |
|
4,100-5,999 |
1 May 2013 |
|
4,000-4,099 |
1 June 2013 |
|
3,000-3,999 |
1 July 2013 |
Although I have referred to “employees” above I suspect the staff numbers should also include workers and anyone else who meets the “jobholder” definition as set out in the relevant regulations. I have a summary factsheet on auto-enrolment which is just about ready to go which I will publish shortly which covers this point.
The Department For Work and Pensions press release can be viewed here.
