Four things all churches need to know about pension re-enrolment

One of the legal requirements of being an employer is meeting pension auto enrolment obligations. This means that every church or charity with employees will provide a workplace pension to all of their eligible workers.

But don’t forget: if you are responsible for auto enrolment, then you will also be responsible for pension re-enrolment.

Pension re-enrolment is a process that all employers need to complete every three years, whereby you are required to re-enrol certain staff into a pension scheme if they have previously left or opted out of your workplace pension.

What you need to do:

1. Choose your re-enrolment date

The date you need to do this will be three years after your original staging date, or the date your payroll was started if after March 2018. Unlike your staging date, you are able to choose your own re-enrolment date, as long as it falls within either three months before or three months after the third anniversary of your automatic enrolment staging date (and every three years thereafter).

2. Assess your staff

Once you have selected your date, you will then need to assess your staff to work out if you need to re-enrol any of them into your pension scheme. You must assess anyone who opted out of the pension scheme, or left the scheme after the opt-out period, or stayed in the pension scheme but chose to reduce the level of pension contributions to below the minimum level. You do not have to assess anyone who is already in the pension scheme, is aged 21 or under, or is at the state pension age or over.

Anyone who has left the pension scheme more than 12 months before your re-enrolment date, and who meets the age criteria, must be re-enrolled into your pension scheme again. You have a choice for those who left within 12 months prior to your re-enrolment date as to whether you put them in again or not.

3. Write to staff that you’ve re-enrolled

You are required to communicate regarding pension enrolment with your employees, so you will need to write to those that you are putting into your scheme, and then…

4. Complete a re-declaration of compliance with The Pensions Regulator

The deadline for completion of the re-declaration of compliance is within the first five months of the third anniversary of your staging date.

Find out more about pension re-enrolment on The Pensions Regulator website (https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/employers/re-enrolment). If you have a query, contact the Stewardship Payroll Bureau team on 020 8418 8181 or [email protected]

Related blog: A question of pensions (stewardship.org.uk)