Auto enrolment spot checks for employers across the North East 13 April 2018
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is carrying out spot checks across the North East of England to identify employers that are not complying with their pension duties.
In the last month inspection teams have visited more than a dozen businesses in towns and cities across the region - including Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, North Shields, South Shields, Bishop Auckland and Stockton-on-Tees - to check that qualifying staff are being given the workplace pensions they are entitled to.
It is part of a nationwide enforcement campaign which began in London last year, ensuring employers are meeting their automatic enrolment duties correctly.
This was the first time these checks have been done in the North East. Short-notice inspections have already begun in Northern Ireland, South Wales, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greater Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham, among others.
The checks help TPR to understand whether employers are facing any unnecessary challenges that we can help them with, such as issues with their systems that we can offer guidance about. But they also highlight employers who have not taken the required steps to become or remain compliant, paving the way for enforcement action against them.
Darren Ryder, TPR’s Director of Automatic Enrolment, said:
"The vast majority of employers are compliant with the law but we are continuing to find a very small proportion of employers who aren’t. In some cases this is down to innocent error. Our visits help us identify why some employers may be struggling so we can support them.
But where we find employers are not complying, in particular when they appear to be doing so deliberately, we will use our powers to ensure they comply so that their workers receive the pensions they are entitled to."
The most recent quarterly automatic enrolment compliance and enforcement bulletin shows that between October and December 2017, TPR issued a total of 7,435 fixed penalty notices and 1,440 escalating penalty notices to employers for non-compliance.
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Pensions Regulator prosecutes for failure to hand over financial information 26 April 2018
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is to prosecute Samuel Smith Old Brewery (Tadcaster) and company chairman Humphrey Smith for failing to provide information and documents required for an ongoing TPR investigation.
TPR sought details of the company’s finances in order to understand the funding position of some of the brewery’s pension schemes.
The company failed to comply with a notice issued under section 72 of the Pensions Act 2004 on 12 January 2018, requiring the information and documents to be provided by 26 January 2018.
The company and Humphrey Smith have been summonsed to appear at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 15 May 2018. They will each face a charge of neglecting or refusing to provide information and documents, without a reasonable excuse, when required to do so under section 72 of the Pensions Act 2004, contrary to section 77(1) of that Act. Humphrey Smith is charged on the basis that the offence by the company was committed with his consent or connivance or by his neglect
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