Re-enrolment for auto enrolment pensions

A guide to re-enrolment

After you have started your pension scheme, some of your employees may leave your business. Others may decide to stop paying pension contributions, or pay less than the minimum automatic enrolment contributions.

As part of auto enrolment legislation, you have a duty to assess and re-enrol eligible employees into your workplace pension scheme every three years. This includes employees who have opted out of the scheme, even if they intend to do so again.

Re-enrolment in five steps

Step one: choose your re-enrolment date

The default for your first re-enrolment date is your duties start date plus three years. This doesn’t have to be exactly three years: you can set your re-enrolment date within a six-month window – three months either side of your default date.
You'll need to re-enrol all eligible employees within six weeks of your chosen re-enrolment date.

Can I use postponement for re-enrolment?

You can’t apply a postponement period when re-enrolling employees, but because you have a six-month window to complete your re-enrolment duties, you should be able to pick a re-enrolment date that suits your business.

Step two: assess your workforce

You’ll need to assess your employees who were previously auto enrolled into your pension scheme but have since:

Opted out (they can choose to do this again after re-enrolment, if they wish).
Chosen to pay in less than the minimum contributions of auto enrolment; or
Stopped paying pension contributions.

You can choose not to assess an employee if they have made any of the changes above in the 12 months leading up to your re-enrolment date.

You could also choose not to to automatically enrol an employee if:

Their contract is about to end.
They are a director of the company.
They are a partner in a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP).
They are on notice of leaving employment.
They have told you that they have lifetime allowance protection in place with HMRC.

Once you’ve decided who to assess, the process will be just the same as it was when you did this at your duties start date.

You’ll then need to set up a pension for the eligible jobholders – employees aged 22 or over and earn above the minimum earnings threshold for auto enrolment – and contribute to it.

Step three: write to the employees that you've re-enrolled

You’ll need to send letters to any employees that you’ve re-enrolled to tell them about it. This needs to happen during the same six-week window that you have to re-enrol all eligible employees.

The letter you send should also let them know that they have one month to opt out of the pension scheme, if this is what they want to do.

Download our re-enrolment letter template (PDF 525KB)

Step four: manage opt-outs

If any of your employees choose not to be re-enrolled in your workplace pension scheme, they’ll need to opt out. If you use our workplace pension, we’ll handle opt-outs for you and let you know when we receive them.

Remember, any employees who might have opted out previously will need to do this each time they’re re-enrolled, if they still don't want to contribute to a pension scheme.

Step five: re-declaration of compliance

You’ll need to submit a re-declaration of compliance to The Pensions Regulator within five months of the three-year anniversary of your duties start date. Even if you don’t have any employees that need to be re-enrolled, you still have to declare that you’re compliant.

To do this, you’ll need to complete the same online form that you filled in when you first set up your workplace pension scheme.

If you don’t send your re-declaration notice, you won’t be compliant with auto enrolment legislation, and you could be fined or prosecuted.

Next steps

Re-enrolment is an ongoing process – you’ll need to re-enrol all eligible employees on a three-year cycle. You need to follow the steps above each time.