I find myself in the unusual position of not having posted on the topic of pensions for more than a month. I’m not sure this has ever before happened on this blog, but having just finished working my way through a pile of report back-issues on the subject of Auto-Enrolment, it’s clearly time to stop the rot and get back onto the pensions theme.

And I thought I would start with an important topic which I have purposely been saving up for the return of the business audience in the post holiday period. The subject? Compliance with the Auto-Enrolment (AE) duties, and what steps the Pensions Regulator (tPR) are taking in this respect.

Back in July the tPR issued their first annual report on Automatic Enrolment. Section 6 of that report highlighted that at the 31st March 2013 tPR had opened “a total of 89 investigations into possible non-compliance by large employers”. The report went on to say that tPR “have not yet needed to use our powers to compel compliance.”

Only a month later, the highly respected Corporate Adviser magazine established (through a Freedom of Information Act request) that 38 warning letters to employers for minor breaches had been issued, and one employer has been issued with a formal compliance notice.

Strangely, the regulator has declined to disclose to which employer the formal notice was issued. It’s hard to see why this stance should be taken as, by definition, only the very largest employers have so far reached staging date. Any employer of that magnitude has really no excuses for failing to comply with AE legislation. It’s possible that the transgressing employer could perhaps arise from the Public Sector (according to a recent DWP report 13 of the first 50 employers to stage were from that grouping), and there is therefore limited appetite for disclosing this information. It will be interesting to see if this detail will become known further down the line.

Speculation aside, this does demonstrate the tPR are (rightly) taking a pro-active stance towards their regulator duties as the landmark legislation that is AE begins to take an active grip on UK business. So for all those employer’s out there that expected zero or minimal monitoring (and I have met several!) this should be ringing some very loud alarm bells.

Or to put it another way: You have been warned!

Best regards

Steve