Auto Re-enrolment
Pensions automatic re-enrolment exercise taking place in June 2025
Every three years, any individuals who are not currently saving for a pension and who meet certain eligibility criteria must by law be re-enrolled automatically into a pension scheme by their employer. Our next automatic re-enrolment exercise will take place in June 2025. This exercise is in addition to our normal automatic enrolment duties where we assess people each month.
Employees and workers not in one of the University’s pension schemes will be assessed for automatic re-enrolment into the relevant scheme using the following criteria:
- Earning more than £833 per month
- Aged 22 years or over
- Under State Pension Age
- Working, or usually working, in the United Kingdom
Where these criteria are met, individuals will be automatically enrolled into the relevant pension scheme. The Pensions Administration team will write to everyone who is automatically enrolled to notify them of this, provide details of the pension scheme that they have enrolled into and explain how they can opt out if they so wish.
Pension contributions may be deducted from an individual’s pay before this communication is received due to the unavoidably small timeframe between an auto-enrolment assessment being made and the payroll being run.
Affected individuals will be able to receive their pension contributions back if they wish by providing a valid opt out form within set timescales, which will be explained in the letter sent to them. Contributions will then be returned to the individual in the next payroll run, subject to applicable payroll cut-off dates.
Automatic re-enrolment is a legal requirement to encourage people to save for their retirement, although we do have some flexibility to exclude from this exercise those individuals who have opted out in the prior 12 months. In addition, individuals with pensions tax exemption certificates do not need to be automatically re-enrolled (which affected individuals will be aware of). These latter individuals should have provided copies of these certificates to the pensions department to ensure that they are not enrolled.