CIPP Survey: Technical Changes to Automatic Enrolment 29 January 2016
The CIPP policy team have put together a survey to gather the views and experiences of members that will feed into the formal response that CIPP will submit for the DWP consultation Technical Changes to Automatic Enrolment Consultation on draft regulations. The draft regulations look to bring about simplifications to the administration of Automatic Enrolment that have been highlighted by stakeholders as automatic enrolment has evolved. Their aim is to reduce the administration burden, though simplification, for employers. The survey contains a number of consultation questions which are taken from the consultation paper. We don’t anticipate that all respondents will wish to respond to all questions and so to skip a question and move on to the next relevant question for you is fine. Some of the questions are asking for ‘likely cost’ or ‘administrative savings’ as a result of some of the measures, an estimate is acceptable if you have one to share, if not, please don’t feel you have to enter a figure.
Each section within the survey is headed with an introduction that does no more than give a brief outline of the proposals, for full detail and background please see the consultation paper and draft regulations .
We anticipate that many of you will be very pleased with some, if not all, of the proposals as you have been telling us about your need for such simplifications for some time, we hope that these regulations, that are due to come in to force 6 April 2016, will have come in time to reduce the administrative burden on you, your employer, your business and/or your clients.
Thank you for your time in completing this survey, we anticipate it will take approximately 15 – 20 minutes. The survey will close on 8 February 2016.
Thousands of small employers complete their workplace pensions duties 29 January 2016
More than 90% of the first small employers required to put their staff into a workplace pension have now complied with the law, showing that automatic enrolment is successful for all sizes of employer.
Around 12,000 small and micro employers became subject to the new legal duties last summer. The majority have put eligible staff into a pension without The Pensions Regulator having to use its powers although, as expected, a number needed the additional nudge of enforcement action.
The Regulator’s latest quarterly Compliance and Enforcement bulletin shows that since the start of automatic enrolment:
4,818 compliance notices have been issued Around half of these (2,596) were issued between October and December last year. A total of 1,594 £400 Fixed Penalty Notice fines have now been issued to employers. Just over a thousand (1,013) Fixed Penalty Notices were issued in the last quarter of 2015. Minister for Pensions, Ros Altmann said that the sharp rise in the number of statutory notices issued by the Regulator reflects the rise in the numbers of employers with automatic enrolment duties and the changing employer type. The regulator is again warning employers to start planning in good time. The majority of compliance notices were issued because employers had left their preparations too late. Employers and their advisers should be aware that an employer issued with a fine will still be required to pay it, even when they complied with their duties. Employers can become non-compliant by failing to complete their declaration of compliance because they wrongly assumed their business adviser was doing this for them. Employers and their advisers should be clear who is completing what automatic enrolment task and advisers should be clear about what services they offer. Other key findings from the bulletin:
Read the Regulator’s full press release
CIPP Policy News Journal
25/04/2016, Page 342 of 453
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