Workplace Pensions and European Employees

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Pensions Minister Steve Webb announced a DWP consultation on 20 February 2012 which seeks to address an unnecessary auto-enrolment administration burden that may have risen unintentionally for dual-status employees.

The Pensions Act 2008 imposes an obligation on employers to auto-enrol a ‘jobholder’ who works or ordinarily works in the UK under their contract.  A 2003 European Directive defines a ‘qualifying employee’ – an employee whose work is sufficiently located in an EEA Member State, other than the UK, so that the worker and employer become liable to the pension laws relevant to that State.

DWP have identified that there are a small number of employees (estimated at 9,000) who may fall into the category of being both a ‘jobholder’ and a ‘qualifying employee’.  This may lead to occupational schemes having to register as cross-border schemes in order to meet the obligations for auto-enrolment of a jobholder.

Simply, the consultation is open until 02 April 2012 and contains the proposal to exempt employers from having to auto-enrol this small number of qualifying employees under the EU Directive who are also jobholders under the Pensions Act 2008.  The consultation contains the draft Regulations (The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Automatic Enrolment) (Amendment) Regulations 2012).

Further Information

• DWP – Automatic Enrolment and European Employees
• DWP  – Automatic Enrolment and European Employees Impact Assessment
• The Pensions Regulator Website – Assessing the Workforce

Tags: auto-enrol, DWP, EEA Member State, Pensions Act 2008, qualifying employee, Steve Webb

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2012 at 14:25 and is filed under Pensions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.