Many small employers may have employees that are not eligible for automatic enrolment and therefore assume that they do not need to set up a pension. Whilst there is no need to set up a pension if you have staff that are not eligible because they are too young or do not earn enough, those employees can still ask to go into a pension scheme. If this happens, you will need to set one up at this point. If your member earns more than £112 a week or £486 a month, you must make contributions to the scheme as well. If they earn less than this, you can choose whether you want to contribute or not. What if no staff are eligible? Even if you don’t have any staff to automatically enrol, you will still need to complete the following tasks:
* You must write to all your staff to let them know they have not been automatically enrolled but can ask to go into a pension scheme. For more information go to write to your staff
* You must complete your declaration of compliance to let The Pensions Regulator know that you have met your legal duties. For more information go to declaration of compliance
You must check the ages and earnings of your staff aged between 22 and state pension age every time you run your payroll to see if anyone who wasn’t eligible for automatic enrolment at your staging date has since become eligible. You must enrol and write to them within six weeks from the day they become eligible.
