Small businesses urged to act now and get ready for new pension duties

Small businesses to receive a letter from The Pensions Regulator urging them to prepare for new pension duties

More than 120,000 small businesses across the North West are to receive a letter from The Pensions Regulator urging them to prepare for new pension duties.

As part of a major new awareness campaign, the regulator is writing to every small employer in the North West to tell them the date their automatic enrolment legal duties come into effect – this is called the staging date. All employers have a staging date that is specific to them. The law also applies to all employers including those with one worker.

The mail out will also ask small business owners to supply email contact details to the regulator so it can provide them with regular reminders and updates as their individual staging date approaches. The letters will be sent in the next few months.

Last year, The Pensions Regulator, which is responsible for ensuring employers comply with their automatic enrolment duties, announced that five million workers had been automatically enrolled into a pension scheme by nearly 43,000 employers.

In the coming months and years, around four million more workers will be enrolled by small employers across the UK. Small employers are those with fewer than 50 workers – including those with one worker, for example a personal assistant.

The UK-wide letter campaign is to ensure that all small employers, including those with just one worker, know that the law applies to them, even if their staging date is not for some time.