Feb 2017
6
Risk of County Court Judgement for Employers who ignore Automatic Enrolment Duties
Employers who are persistently ignoring their automatic enrolment duties are being warned by The Pensions Regulator that they could be issued a county court judgement. Employers that ignore penalty notices issued by the The Pension Regulator to them are more likely to be issued with a CCJ. And if an employer does not pay within the 30 day limit of when they received the CJJ, these details will be recorded on their credit record. This may affect their borrowing ability in the future.
According to information from The Pension Regulator nearly 3,000 penalty notices were issued to employers between October and December 2016. In this same timeframe 870 escalating penalty notices were issued to employers. The number of fines have risen in line with the higher amount of employers now reaching their compliance deadline. Due to a small number of employers failing to pay these fines a number of County Court Judgements have now been issued.
The Pension Regulator believe that the smaller employers are leaving things to the last minute for their automatic enrolment duties, but if a compliance notice is issued hurries the employer up to fulfill their duties.The executive director for auto-enrolment at The Pensions Regulator, Charles Counsell , said: “Burying your head in the sand and ignoring your legal duties means your staff are missing out on pensions they are entitled to and your credit rating and reputation could be hit.”
Andy Beswick, managing director of business solutions at insurance firm Aviva, said: “No one wants to see small businesses being penalised for not complying with auto-enrolment. “A workplace pension can be a great asset to an employer when it comes to retaining and attracting key staff. It’s also a legal requirement so ignoring it isn’t an option. “There are a number of pension providers who have worked hard to make auto-enrolment as simple as possible for companies and advisers. With a bit of planning, the process of setting up a workplace pension is not as complicated as most people think.”
