EXPLANATORY NOTE
(This note is not part of the Regulations)
These Regulations make provision as to how sections 2 to 9 of the Pensions (No. 2) Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 (“the Act”) (“the employers’ duties”) apply to employers. Those duties include the duty on an employer (under section 3 of the Act) to make prescribed arrangements by which jobholders become active members of automatic enrolment pension schemes. These Regulations also set the transitional periods for money purchase and personal pension schemes and for defined benefits and hybrid schemes.
Regulation 2 makes provision for the application of the employers’ duties to employers.
Regulation 3 provides how the employers’ duties apply to an employer earlier than the date on which they otherwise would have applied to that employer, where an employer satisfies certain conditions.
Regulation 4 and the Table in it provide how the employers’ duties apply to employers over a period from 1st October 2012 to 1st September 2016.
Regulation 5 sets the length of the two transitional periods during which the quality requirement for UK money purchase and personal pension schemes is less than what is provided for in sections 20 and 26 of the Act. At the expiry of the two transitional periods, the quality requirement for those types of scheme will be what is provided for in the Act.
Regulation 6 prescribes the length of the transitional period for defined benefits and hybrid schemes. Where the conditions in section 30(2) of the Act are satisfied and continue to be satisfied during that transitional period, an employer is under a duty to make arrangements for jobholders to become active members of an automatic enrolment scheme from the end of that period.
An assessment of the cost to business of these Regulations is detailed in a Regulatory Impact Assessment, a copy of which has been laid in the Business Office and the Library of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Copies of the Assessment are available from the Department for Social Development, Social Security Policy and Legislation Division, Level 1, James House, 2-4 Cromac Avenue, Gasworks Business Park, Ormeau Road, Belfast BT7 2JA or from the website: http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/index/ssa/ssani-publications/ssani-pensions-publications.htm. A copy of the Assessment is also annexed to the Explanatory Memorandum which is available alongside this Statutory Rule on the website: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/northernireland/ni-srni.htm.