Pension re-declaration of compliance

How to complete your auto-enrolment pension re-declaration of compliance

Any employers who started employing workers before 1st October 2017 will have been issued with a staging date. This is the date when they had to have a qualifying auto enrolment pension in place. For anyone who starting employing people after 30th September 2017 pension duties started with their first employee. Your staging date or date when your pension duties started sets the date for your pension re-declaration of compliance, on a three year cycle.

When is the deadline for my pension re-declaration of compliance?

Your pension re-declaration of compliance will need to be completed roughly three years after your staging date. The first part of the process is to re-enrol your employees. As soon as you have completed this re-enrolment, you will can complete the re-declaration of the compliance to the Pensions Regulator. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in a fine.

The first date to work out is the 3 year anniversary of your staging date. The pension re-enrolment window is from 3 months before your the 3 year anniversary until 3 months after. You can start your re-declaration at any time after you have re-enrolled staff, or as soon as you work out you have no staff to put into your pension scheme.

The example below shows the dates for a staging date of 1st June 2016:

3 year anniversary falls on 1st June 2019
Earliest date for pension re-enrolment is 1st March 2019
Latest date for pension re-enrolment is 31st August 2019
Earliest date for pension re-declaration of compliance is the date you complete re-enrolment
Latest date for pension re-declaration of compliance is 31st October 2019

To find your re-enrolment date use the the following link to the Pension Regulator Tool. You will need your PAYE reference and the Letter Code, which you will have been sent when your pension duties started.

Completing and submitting your re-declaration of compliance is a legal duty to show how you have fulfilled your employer duties for re-enrolment. You must complete your re-declaration even if you don’t have any staff to put back into your pension scheme.

Submit your re-declaration of compliance online

The pension regulator has a useful Re-declaration of compliance checklist. If you have all the information you need to hand, the process shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.

Top tips from the Pension Regulator

Make sure you’re prepared – you’ll need all of the information on this checklist.
This is your responsibility as an employer – don’t assume an agent, third party or your pension scheme will do it for you.
Start ahead of time with information you already know – anything you add can be saved at any time.
If you have to put staff into a pension scheme, complete your re-declaration as soon as you’ve done this.
Only tell us about pension schemes you’ve used to put your staff into for automatic enrolment.
Make sure you know about and tell us about every PAYE scheme you use.

When you have all information you need, head over to the Pension Regulator website to complete your Pension Re-declaration of Compliance

What if all my staff opted out?

Pension contributions as a percentage of qualifying earnings

Date	Employer minimum	Employee minimum / Employer additional	Total
Employer's staging date to 5 April 2018	1%	1%	2%
6 April 2016 to 5 April 2019	2%	3%	5%
6 April 2019 onwards	3%	5%	8%

Minimum pension contributions increased from 1st April 2019. The total of employer an employee contributions after any tax relief must now be be 8% of qualifying earnings.

Qualifying Earnings Thresholds for Auto-Enrolment 2020-21

2020-21	Annual	1 week	Fortnight	4 weeks	1 month	1 quarter	Bi-annual
Lower level of qualifying earnings	£6,240	£120	£240	£480	£520	£1,560	£3,120
Earnings trigger for automatic enrolment	£10,000	£192	£384	£768	£833	£2,499	£4,998
Upper level of qualifying earnings	£50,000	£962	£1,9244	£3,847	£4,167	£12,500	£25,000