Postponement is when you make a decision to delay enrolling employees into a workplace pension scheme.
This could be because you’ve taken on new or temporary nanny, or for administrative reasons.
You can choose to postpone auto enrolment for nannies for up to three months.
You can postpone from:
- Your staging date (the date by which you need to have a workplace pension in place)
- An employee’s first day of employment
- The date an employee first becomes for automatic enrolment – ie earns over £10,000 and is between age 22 and State pension age.
It’s important to understand that if you decide to postpone from your staging date, your staging date stays the same.
You must also carry out your duties to assess your nanny, even if you plan to postpone auto enrolment for nannies.
Why postpone?
There are several reasons why you might want to postpone. Common reasons are:
- You take on a new nanny who is on a probationary period
- You take on temporary nanny who won’t be with you after three months
- You want to align auto enrolment with your payroll
- Your nanny might occasionally work paid overtime which would make him or her eligible to be enrolled
How postponement works
You can use postponement on your staging date to delay automatic enrolment for up to three months.
There’s no need to tell The Pensions Regulator (TPR) if you decide to postpone. But you must write to your nanny to tell him or her that their auto enrolment is being deferred to a later date – known as the deferral date.
If you’re postponing you have to write to your nanny within six weeks of:
- Your staging date, if you’re using postponement from your staging date
- The first day of employment, if you are postponing a new nanny
- The date a nanny meets the criteria of an eligible worker.
Your letter must tell them:
- That automatic enrolment has been postponed
- The deferral date
- That on the deferral date, if they meet the criteria, they will be automatically enrolled
TPR has a template for a postponement letter to send to staff.
Once you reach the referral date you need to assess your nanny again. If he or she has become eligible they must be enrolled into the pension scheme.
If they don’t meet the eligibility criteria on the deferral date then you will need to assess the nanny on the first day of each pay reference period going forward. If your nanny meets the eligibility criteria in the future, you can postpone again, as long as there is a gap of one pay period in between your deferral date and the date you decide to postpone.
If all of this seems like a hassle – and it is – don’t forget that you can outsource postponement, along with pension set-up to your Pay My Nanny.
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More information
- Trigger points
- Detailed guidance on postponement from The Pensions Regulator