Re-enrolment – what you need to know

Every three years you must assess any employees who have left your workplace pension and re-enrol them if they are still eligible. Here are the things you need to know.

Choosing your first re-enrolment date

Re-enrolment is separate from the regular assessment of employees you do in each pay period. It’s specifically targeted at employees who have left their workplace pension.

You need to choose a date three years from the date your workplace pension started. Your re-enrolment date must be within a six-month ‘window’ starting three months before, and ending three months after, the three-year anniversary of your pension’s start date

You can only choose one date, even if you had different start dates for different groups of employees. It’s important to note, you can’t use postponement with re-enrolment.

Here are some examples.

Re-enrolment window

Pension start date Re-enrolment window
From To
1 February 2021 1 November 2023 30 April 2024
1 April 2022 1 January 2025 30 June 2026
1 October 2023 1 July 2026 31 December 2026

Choosing your first re-enrolment date will set your future re-enrolment dates to that same date.

Step 1: assessing your employees

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Do they qualify?

To qualify for re-enrolment employees must be:

• eligible jobholders, aged between 22 and State Pension age, and earning at least £10,000 a year, and
• previous members of the Scheme who opted out.

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Critical actions

If any of your employees meet these criteria, you must re-enrol them on your re-enrolment date, even if they’ve told you they don’t want to rejoin the Scheme. You’re required by law to re-enrol these employees and give them the option to opt out again.

You don’t have to re-enrol non-eligible jobholders or entitled workers, even if they’ve previously been members of the Scheme.

 

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Exceptions to re-enrolment

There are some categories of eligible jobholder you can choose to re-enrol if you want to, but you don’t have to.

Exceptions to re-enrolment

1
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Stopped being active members (paying pension contributions) in the 12 months before your re-enrolment date.

2
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Have given, or been given, notice to end their employment.

3
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Were in another pension scheme that wound up, and received a winding-up lump sum payment while they were working, in the 12 months before your re-enrolment date – then left their employment but were re-employed by the same employer.

4
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Have tax protection on their pension savings.

5
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Are a director of the employer or a partner in a limited liability partnership (LLP).

6
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Are a ‘qualifying person’ for cross-border employment legislation, usually because their employment is based in an EEA state other than the UK.

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Restart contributions

Once you’ve put your eligible employees back into your workplace pension, you’ll need to start deducting employee contributions and paying employer contributions.

Opting out

You’ll need to be prepared to process any opt-outs.

Your employees have the right to opt out within one month of their re-enrolment and receive a refund of their contributions, in the same way as when they were first enrolled.

Employees can also choose to leave your workplace pension at any time. They’ll stop paying contributions and so will you as their employer. But unless they’ve opted out within a month of being re-enrolled, their pension savings stay in the pension until they retire or transfer them out.

Re-declaring compliance

Once you’ve completed your auto re-enrolment you need to tell The Pensions Regulator (TPR) you’ve complied with your re-enrolment duties.  You need to do this within five months of:

  • the three-year anniversary of your staging date, or
  • your previous re-enrolment date.

Even if you didn’t have any employees to re-enrol you need to re-declare your compliance to TPR. Log on to TPR’s website to check and update your registration information.

You’ll need to confirm:

  • the type of pension scheme you use for auto enrolment
  • your employer pension scheme reference
  • your pension scheme reference, and
  • your pension provider’s address.

You’ll also need to give:

  • your re-enrolment date
  • your total number of employees, and the number who are already in a qualifying pension scheme
  • the number of employees you’ve re-enrolled, and
  • the number of employees you assessed for re-enrolment, but didn’t re-enrol as they weren’t eligible jobholders.