Bee-Mail - 16 February 2010

Starting dates for auto-enrolment for all UK employers – the definitive list

OK, this Bee-Mail is the one you’ll need to print out and pin up on the wall. As promised it lists the commencement dates for auto-enrolment and the other duties laid on UK employers by the Pensions Act 2008.

Every employer in the UK has already been allocated a ‘go live’ date for the new pension reforms in one of what I think are six broad stages containing 43 separate steps starting on 1st October 2012 and ending on 1st September 2016. Those six stages are as follows:

Stage 1: The larger employers (with 800 or more employees) get to go first in the first 12 steps from 1st October 2012 to 1st October 2013. [In these steps employers are ranked by number of employees.]

Stage 2: The next three steps (steps 13 to 15) are reserved for employers with between 250 and 799 employees and are from 1st November 2013 to 1st February 2014. [In these steps employers are ranked by number of employees.]

Stage 3: This is a bit of a funny one and is reserved for just step 16 where a randomly selected group of micro-employees (with fewer than 50 employees) get to go live on 1st March 2014 as a sort of test for when all other micro employees go live later on. [In this step employers are randomly selected with reference to the last 2 characters of their Employer Reference Numbers for PAYE.]

Stage 4: The next four steps (steps 17 to 20) are reserved for employers with between 50 and 249 employees and are from 1st April 2014 to 1st July 2014. [In these steps employers are ranked by number of employees.]

Stage 5:  The next 18 steps (steps 21 to 38) are reserved for all the remaining so-called micro-employers; those with fewer than 50 employees. These 18 steps range from 1st August 2014 to 1st February 2016. [In these steps employers are ranked with reference to the last 2 characters of their Employer Reference Numbers for PAYE.]

Stage 6: The last 5 steps (steps 39 to 43) are reserved for new businesses that start up from 2012 and are from 1st March 2016 to 1st September 2016. [In these steps employers are ranked by the date PAYE first becomes payable.]

OK, if you’ve got that here is the full list that will enable you to work out the starting date for any UK employer:

OK, so that’s it. As usual you can get to read more about each of these stages and the overall legislation from the previous Bee-Mails in this set (you didn’t think it would all fit together so neatly did you?)

Those Bee-Mails, in their order of publication were:

25th January - The 43 Steps...
1st February - Who loves ya baby?
2nd February - Micro-Employers: the starting dates for auto-enrolment
12th February - The 39th Step...

If you want to re-read any or all of those classic Bee-Mails all you have to do is click on the links and the magic of the www will do the rest.

Are we modern or what?