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Updates from the Clayton & Brewill team.
Auto-enrolment: nominate a contact letter
If you’ve received a letter from The Pension Regulator (TPR) asking you to nominate a contact for auto-enrolment, then you are not alone. TPR is sending out over one million of these letters to small and micro businesses over the next three months.
Clayton & Brewill’s pension auto-enrolment experts explain what you need to do.
Between February 2015 and May 2015 small and micro businesses with ‘staging dates’ between May 2016 and August 2017 can expect to receive a letter from The Pension Regulator (TPR) with a requirement to nominate a contact for all auto-enrolment communications.
With many bigger businesses failing to meet the auto-enrolment deadlines (and getting hit with fines…), TPR clearly feels it needs to give smaller businesses as great a chance as possible of complying with these new workplace pension rules.
When you receive your letter you will see that it carries three key pieces of information:
1) Your staging date
2) Your PAYE reference number
3) Your letter code
Your letter code is unique to your business and you will need this for all communications with TPR so make sure you keep it in a safe place!
Log on to The Pension Regulator portal and nominate your contacts.
The person you nominate will receive all the email communications from TPR in the run up to your staging date. We recommend your nominate someone senior in your organisation – ideally the business owner.
When you go through the nomination process you have the chance to nominate a secondary contact and Clayton & Brewill are happy to act as this contact point for you.
It can be useful to have your accountant as a secondary contact as it’s an extra pair of eyes to ensure you don’t miss the various deadlines – particularly if, like some of our farming clients, you are not a big user of email.
How long do I need to prepare for auto-enrolment?
Generally speaking, we recommend starting the preparation for implementing auto-enrolment at least 12 months before your staging date. Clayton & Brewill has helped a number of larger businesses through their auto-enrolment requirements and the more time you have to plan, then the better you can mitigate the effects of the changes on your business.
Whatever you do, please don’t put the letter away in a drawer and forget all about it!