Pension deadline looms for SW small businesses

Over 174,675 businesses based in the South West1 must automatically enrol  eligible employees into a workplace pension scheme before 1 April 2017, including businesses employing only one or two people.

Automatic enrolment can be complex and small businesses can be stretched - often with little experience of running a pension scheme, so the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) has created Pension Solution to help small businesses through the automatic enrolment process.

Commenting, Laura Webb, Head of Membership Relations, Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said: “Automatic enrolment has been a great success, with over 6.1 million people now saving into a workplace pension4. Workplace pensions are a great way for employees to save for retirement and it’s important small employers make sure they take part in time otherwise they may incur a fine.

“If you’re a small business owner and don’t know where to start with automatic enrolment then take a look at Pension Solution. It’s a service designed specifically to take small businesses through automatic enrolment step by step. It provides an impartial guide to pension providers in the market, handy templates for telling employees about automatic enrolment and reminders about what the next steps will be and when to take them.

“We also offer a free half-day training course, which will help to provide small businesses with all the basic information needed to implement automatic enrolment.”