As set out by the Pensions Act 2008, employers have a legal duty to put certain staff who have left their pension scheme back into a qualifying pension scheme; this is called re-enrolment and is undertaken every three years on the anniversary of the initial
employer staging date.
Our records show that your school’s re-enrolment date is in May 2022. As part of your service level agreement, we will reassess all employees who are not currently in a pension scheme in May 2022. Any employees who meet the criteria below will be opted back
into the relevant pension scheme (LGPS or TPS) from 1st May if they:
- earn over £833 per month and;
- are aged between 22 years old and under state pension age and;
- have not previously opted out in the 12 months prior to May 2022.
Please note that for any employees who have elected to join the LGPS 50/50 scheme in the last three years, they will be automatically put back into the main scheme in May 2022. More information can be found on the LGPS 50/50 scheme
here. We will write to individual employees, who are currently in the 50/50 scheme to advise of them of their options.
It would be appreciated if you could inform your staff that this process will take place so they are able to plan accordingly. At this stage we are not able to provide a definitive list of staff who will be impacted, however we have recently updated the
Staff Database and this now details the pension scheme that the employee is currently a member of (or not as the case may be) which may be useful.
After the payroll has been processed and all relevant employees assessed, we will write to any staff who have previously opted out of the pension scheme to advise them of the outcome of the assessment:
- Employees who met the criteria above will be provided with full information about the scheme they have been enrolled into. Should the employee wish to opt out, details will be included in the letter as to how to do this. To be fully compliant, schools should
not directly provide employees with opt out forms.
- Employees who have not met the criteria above will be offered the option to join the scheme should they wish to do so.
By law any employee who has been re-enrolled must be opted back in for at least 1 month and pension deductions taken and cannot pre-emptively opt out.
More information on re-enrolment can be found on The Pensions Regulator website -
https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/employers/re-enrolment/next-re-enrolment
Any queries, please contact your designated payroll officer or me directly.
Donna Jones
External Payroll Team Manager