You must do this on your re-enrolment date.
On your re-enrolment date, you’ll need to assess certain staff to work out if you need to put them back into your pension scheme.
1. Work out which staff to include in your assessment
You only need to assess certain staff for re-enrolment.
Staff you must assess
You must assess staff who have:
- asked to leave (opted out of) your pension scheme
- left (ceased active membership of) your pension scheme after the end of the opt-out period
- stayed in your pension scheme – but chosen to reduce the level of pension contributions to below the minimum level
Staff you don't need to assess
You can leave out from your assessment any staff member who, on your re-enrolment date:
- is already in the pension scheme you use for automatic enrolment (a qualifying scheme)
- is aged 21 or under
- is at state pension age (SPA) or over
- has not yet had an automatic enrolment date (met the age and earnings criteria for automatic enrolment, or who has been postponed)
2. Assess your staff
Any staff member who left your automatic enrolment pension scheme more than 12 months before your re-enrolment date and is:
- aged between 22 up to State Pension Age
- and earns over £10,000 a year, or £833 a month, or £192 a week
must be put into a pension scheme and you must both pay into it.
In addition to the staff that you must re-enrol, you can choose to re-enrol any staff member who is:
- aged between 22 up to State Pension Age
- and earns over £10,000 a year, or £833 a month, or £192 a week
and who:
- left your automatic enrolment (qualifying) pension scheme in the 12 months leading up to your re-enrolment date
- was paid a winding up lump sum in the 12 months before your re-enrolment date, then left your employment and were later re-employed by you
- has given notice or been given notice of the end of their employment
- has primary, enhanced, fixed or individual protection from tax charges on their pension savings
- holds the office of director with the employer
- is a partner in a Limited Liability Partnership which is the employer, and is not treated for income tax purposes as falling within HMRC’s ‘salaried member’ rules
More information on the exceptions from the automatic re-enrolment duty and other employer duties can be found in Detailed guidance no. 1 – Employer duties and defining the workforce (PDF, 176kb, 34 pages).
3. What's next?
What you need to do next depends on whether you have staff to re-enrol into your scheme.
You must do this within six weeks after your re-enrolment date
Having worked out which staff must be re-enrolled, you must now put them back into a pension scheme that you use for automatic enrolment and start paying into it. You must do this within six weeks of your re-enrolment date.
Once you've put your staff back into your pension scheme, you need to write to them to let them know. We’ll tell you how to do this on the next step.
Complete your re-declaration of compliance
If you don’t have any staff to re-enrol, you still need to complete your re-declaration of compliance to tell us how you have met your re-enrolment duties.
You must complete and submit your re-declaration of compliance within five months of the third anniversary of your previous re-enrolment date.
It is your legal duty as the employer to make sure that the re-declaration is completed on time and the information entered is correct. If not, you may be fined.
Once you have completed your re-declaration of compliance you still have ongoing duties towards your staff.