Inspectors to ensure firms have workplace pensions

THE Pensions Regulator (TPR) has begun carrying out spot checks in south Wales to ensure that employers are complying with their pension responsibilities.

Inspection teams will be visiting dozens of business premises in Cardiff, Newport, Caerphilly, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cynon Taff next week to check that qualifying staff are being given the workplace pensions they are entitled to.

The inspections are part of a nationwide enforcement campaign which began in London in April to ensure employers are meeting their automatic workplace pension enrolment duties correctly.

This is the first time these checks have been done in Wales. Short notice inspections have also been carried out in Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The spot checks will help The Pensions Regulator determine whether employers are facing any unnecessary challenges and whether they need assistance with making improvements to their systems.

But they are also aimed at highlighting any employers who have not taken the required steps to become or remain compliant, paving the way for enforcement action.

Darren Ryder, TPR’s director of automatic enrolment, said: “The vast majority of employers are continuing to become compliant ahead of their deadline, but these visits help us to identify why some have not, so we can take action where we need to.

“Every employer has workplace pension duties and we are determined that every worker gets the pension they are entitled to.

“Automatic enrolment is not an option, it’s the law. Where we find employers are not complying with the law, we will use our powers to make them comply,” added Mr Ryder.

More than 690,000 employers across the UK have met their automatic enrolment duties, with more than eight million workers given workplace pensions as a result.

Data to the end of April reveals that more than 2,370 employers in Cardiff have met their automatic enrolment duties, along with 790 employers in Newport, 920 in Caerphilly, 900 in the Vale of Glamorgan and 1,400 in Rhondda Cynon Taff.

As a result, more than 84,000 members of staff in those areas have been put into a workplace pensions to date.

TPR teams will begin visiting other towns and cities across the UK in the coming weeks.