Auto-enrolment is the requirement for every business in the UK with one or more employees to offer and contribute to a workplace pension scheme. In this article, we look at the obligations imposed on employers, potential compliance issues, and the sanctions for non-compliance.

Auto-enrolment applies to all businesses with at least one eligible employee. Your business will have a “staging date”, decided by your PAYE reference, which is the date by which you must be compliant with the auto-enrolment legislation.

For many pharmacy businesses with fewer than 50 employees, the relevant dates are between June 1, 2015 and April 1, 2017.

A year in advance of your staging date, you will receive, or may already have received, a letter from the Pensions Regulator informing you of your staging date.

It is important to be proactive and take steps to ensure that you are aware of the exact staging date that applies to your business. You can do this by visiting the Pensions Regulator website. Each business may postpone its staging date by three months. However, this can only be done once.