Auto Enrolment

The Government has introduced legislation which requires all employers to automatically enrol certain workers into a qualifying workplace scheme if they are not already in one.
The employees affected by the new legislation are those who:

• are not already in a qualifying workplace pension scheme;
• are at least 22 years old and below state pension age;
• earn more than the minimum earnings threshold (£10,000 in 2014/15)
• work in the UK

Although automatic enrolment came into force from 1st October 2012, the Council is not required to auto-enrol eligible employees until its ‘staging date’ of 1st May 2013. All newly appointed eligible employees, newly eligible existing employees and new and existing casual workers will be auto-enrolled into the Council’s pension scheme from this date onwards.

Under the transitional arrangements in the Regulations the Council has applied a transitional delay of auto-enrolment to all existing ‘opted-out’ eligible employees until 30th September 2017.

From 1st October 2017 however ALL eligible employees including existing opted-out employees will be auto-enrolled as set out in the Regulations. Any member of staff, once enrolled, may elect to opt out of the scheme at any time.

Auto-enrolment applies to the post and not the person therefore those who work in more than one post with the Council will be enrolled for each post.
The Council will provide those employees who do not satisfy the above criteria with the opportunity to opt in to the Council’s pension scheme.

Every three years the Council will be required to re-enrol all eligible staff who, at that time, are not members of the Council’s pension scheme, even if they have previously opted out.