8.1 million sign up to auto-enrolment

New figures from The Pensions Regulator show 8.1 million employees have now signed up for a workplace pension since the launch of automatic enrolment – a figure that will increase once 500,000 additional employers introduce their schemes in the coming months.

Automatic enrolment was introduced under the Pensions Act 2008 to ensure that every employer puts their qualifying staff into an automatic enrolment pension scheme, after it was discovered just one in three private sector workers were paying into a workplace pension.

During June 2017, 168,000 people signed up to workplace pensions and by the end of that month, 8,165,000 workers were contributing to a workplace pension as a direct result of auto-enrolment. This is despite a survey conducted by Bidvine showing worrying numbers of employers not even being aware of what auto-enrolment is.

After declaring compliance with the auto-enrolment rules, employers continue to have ongoing duties, although most micro employers (those with up to nine employees) say they only need to spend 30 minutes each month completing them.

Darren Ryder, Director of Automatic Enrolment, The Pensions Regulator said: “There are more than 500,000 more employers whose duties are still to begin over the coming months. I would urge each and every one of them to check what they need to do and when they need to do it so they can seek our help if they need it.”

Date published 19 Jul 2017 | Last updated 20 Sep 2022