Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must put certain staff into an auto enrolment pension scheme and contribute towards it. The scheme covers all employers, even the smallest with only one member of staff.

The smallest businesses are currently facing staging deadlines to set up auto enrolment for all employees. Staging dates are defined by PAYE codes.

In addition, ongoing schemes run by employers have to be re-enrolled every three years. Even companies without any staff have to re-enroll by completing a re-declaration of compliance.

From 1 October 2017, the legal duties as an employer begin on the day the first member of staff starts work. This will replace the staging system based on PAYE numbers. For those who employ a member of staff between 2 April and 30 September 2017, the date automatic enrolment duties start will depend on whether the employer set up a PAYE scheme with HMRC before or after the member of staff started work.

If the PAYE scheme was set up before staff started working, the employer’s legal duties will start on one of two dates:

• 1 January 2018, for members of staff first paid between 2 April 2017 and 30 June 2017; or
• 1 February 2018, if member of staff first paid between 1 July 2017 and 30 September 2017.

If the PAYE scheme was set up after the staff member started working for the company, the following compliance with legal duties applies:

Employers’ legal duties start on date the first member of staff started working for the company. However, for simplicity, The Pensions Regulator will treat the duties as starting on:

• 1 January 2018, if member of staff first paid between 2 April 2017 and 30 June 2017; or
• 1 February 2018, if member of staff first paid between 1 July 2017 and 30 September 2017.

 The introduction of automatic enrolment was expected to lead to around eight million workers saving more for their retirement so this number has already been exceeded with 642,000 employers offering these pensions. At the end of June, 8,165,000 workers were contributing to a workplace pension as a direct result of automatic enrolment. During June 2017, 168,000 people signed up to workplace pensions. The latest declaration of compliance report shows that the original target of eight million, estimated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) before the launch has already been reached – with hundreds of thousands more employers still to enroll staff over the coming months. Employers continue to have ongoing duties after they have declared their compliance with the automatic enrolment rules.