Firm took contributions for non-existent pension Care agency fined for telling staff it had set up auto-enrolment

ABIRMINGHAM healthcare company and its managing director have been ordered to pay more than £20,000 after they admitted misleading The Pensions Regulator about providing their staff with a workplace pension.

Crest Healthcare and managing director Sheila Aluko each pleaded guilty to one charge of knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to the regulator and two counts of wilfully failing to comply with their automatic enrolment duties when they appeared at Brighton Magistrates’ Court in March.

A whistleblower prompted the investigation into the homecare agency after contacting the regulator to complain that staff suspected they had been misled into falsely believing their pension scheme was up and running.

Contributions were being taken from the pay packets of the workers but Crest Healthcare would not give the staff information about its scheme.

In March 2016, Aluko, 53, submitted a declaration of compliance to the regulator, claiming the company had complied with its duties.

She claimed staff had been written to about the pension scheme and said 25 staff had been enrolled into a workplace pension scheme.

The regulator said Crest Healthcare, based in Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak, had not completed the setting up of a pension scheme, had not automatically enrolled any staff and had not written to its staff to tell them about automatic enrolment, as it was legally bound to do. No pension contributions had been paid.

Later the employer began deducting pension contributions from the wages of some workers but kept them in the company’s bank account and did not pay them into a pension scheme for more than eight months.

It was only after the regulator had executed a search warrant at Crest Healthcare’s offices and interviewed Aluko under caution that the pension scheme was set up and the contributions were paid in.

Sentencing the company and Aluko, District Judge Teresa Szagun said it was important to show that individuals and companies did not benefit from avoiding their automatic enrolment responsibilities.

The judge said Aluko “must, as an intelligent businesswoman, have appreciated the obligations on her and also the intent of automatic enrolment” and said her response to the requests of the whistleblower was “dismissive”.

The judge added: “The need to deter this type of offending requires a penalty proportionate with the seriousness of the offence.”

Judge Szagun fined Crest Healthcare £13,000 and ordered the company to pay £3,404 costs and a £120 victim surcharge.

She fined Sheila Aluko £1,624 and ordered her to pay £3,404 costs and a £120 victim surcharge.

Darren Ryder, director of automatic enrolment at The Pensions Regulator, said: “Whistleblowers have a vital role to play in helping us ensure workers are getting the pensions they are entitled to.

“The whistleblower in this case highlighted that workers who asked Sheila Aluko about their pensions were being fobbed off with the false claim they had been automatically enrolled.

“When we investigated, story unravelled.

“We will not tolerate non-compliance and, as this case shows, neither will the courts.”

Darren Ryder

Aluko’s