Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must put certain staff into a pension scheme and contribute towards it. This is called automatic enrolment.
If your client employs at least one person (eg a personal care assistant or helper in their home) they are an employer and have certain legal duties. However, if your client's staff is paid for by an agency who pays the National Insurance contributions, the agency is the employer and not your client.
We work with employers to give them guidance on what is expected of them.
Checking your client's duties
Our guide for business advisers covers how automatic enrolment applies to your clients, and can help you provide support for them.
When their duties apply from depends on when they employed their first member of staff:
If your client is a new employer who took on their first member of staff on or after 1 October 2017, their duties start on the day their first member of staff started working for them.
You can refer to our information about new employers to find out more. Your client will need to act quickly once their new staff starts working for them, so you should check what they’ll have to do so you can provide support.
A summary table (PDF, 137KB, 4 pages) is available to help you understand when the duties start for your clients, depending on when they first became an employer.
Go to our employer’s step-by-step guide to automatic enrolment to see how it works.