Auto Enrolment doesn’t have to be expensive, but the fines can be!

Production Glassfibre is the UK’s largest general moulder of glass reinforced plastic parts and products. Operating from factories across England and Scotland, Production Glassfibre employs more than 200 staff.

With multiple sites and operating factories under 3 different businesses, Production Glassfibre incurred 3 separate staging dates from the regulator. After receiving their initial staging dates letter back in 2013, the in house payroll team, pro-actively started managing the auto enrolment process needed for the July 2014 deadline.

Although employing over 200 staff, only 3% of the workforce at Production Glassfibre had already joined the workplace pension. With plenty of staff to educate on the new legislation, and with complex laws to understand, the team at Production Glassfibre sought advice from Taylor Patterson as soon as they could.

Ensuring compliance with the pensions regulator was a main priority for the team. The initial task set out for Taylor Patterson was to review the existing pension scheme Production Glassfibre already had in place, and evaluate if it was suitable enough to meet the needs of the regulator, the employer and the employee in the future. The evaluation process took into consideration how compliant the current pension was with the reforms, and if Production Glassfibre risked facing any penalties through non-compliance.

Craig Hugo, Taylor Patterson commented, “We provided our entry level auto enrolment NEST service to the team at Production Glassfibre. They were concerned the information from the regulator was quite technical and there is potential to miss an important piece of the jigsaw by getting everything ready for their deadline date. Our entry level service is ideal for this kind of sound boarding advice they needed.

We started the ball rolling by setting up a scheme with NEST on the employees behalf and assisting in the implementation of a system for uploading employee data files onto the NEST platform. By providing ongoing guidance on the various compliance requirements such as scheme certification and the declaration of compliance, we could be sure to meet their main priority.

Production Glassfibre were right to be concerned about compliance. The fines businesses now face through non- compliance can be astronomical. Employers that fail to comply can be issued with a fixed penalty of £400, followed by penalties of £50 to £10,000 a day depending on the number of employees and the scale of the offence! ”

Once the analysis had been concluded, the Payroll team at Production Glassfibre used Sage to manage their payroll and pension contributions moving forward. Taylor Patterson remained by their side to ensure the uploads of data were correct and compliant.

Vicki, Payroll Manager at Production Glassfibre ‘Our Payroll team is based in Fyfe, so it was important to us to have access to the Lancashire based team at Taylor Patterson. They were always at the end of the phone / email for us, which was perfect.

Many of the administration processes were already in place for us due to the Sage software, however we were very conscious we needed to remain compliant all the way through the process, which at times was quite tough. The language used by the regulator, is quite intricate and technical and we benefited from Taylor Pattersons experience to de-mystify these new rules and legislation. We now know we have the best pension suited to our employees, and we have a great pension take up rate from our staff and we aren’t at risk of any hefty fines.” Now all that’s left is for the team to communicate the joining process for new starters at Production Glassfibre, and manage ongoing legislation updates from the pensions regulator, safe in the knowledge that the team at Taylor Patterson are always at the end of the phone for any further assistance.