Automatic enrolment

Automatic enrolment is a government initiative to help more people save for later life through a pension scheme at work. It requires employers to automatically enrol their eligible workers into a pension scheme. The employer must also pay money into the scheme.

Automatic enrolment is being rolled out in stages, across all employers. It started with the larger employers first, but, by October 2018 all existing employers were required to offer a workplace pension scheme to eligible workers.

For the purpose of automatic enrolment workers are put into three different categories depending on how much they earn and their age. The categories are:

• eligible jobholders
• non-eligible jobholders
• entitled workers

Every employer in the UK has been allocated a date from which the duties will first apply to the employer, known as the employer's 'staging date'. An employer's staging date is based on the number of people in the employer's PAYE scheme on 1 April 2012.

Employers in our pension fund should provide us with details of their auto enrolment staging date and also their subsequent 3 year auto enrolment staging anniversaries by emailing employers@buckinghamshire.gov.uk.

For more information on Automatic Enrolment and the LGPS read the Local Government Association's Automatic Enrolment Guide.