Staging date while on maternity leave

ozzage · 7 July 2015 at 10:15PM

Hi workplace pension experts, I hope you can help me out with this.

If the staging date for auto-enrolment is while a woman is on maternity leave, how should the employer's contribution be calculated?

There is a information out there saying that any employER's pensions combinations should CONTINUE during maternity leave, based on her normal pay (ie not on the maternity pay levels), but that the employEE's contribution is only based on what she actually earns whilst on leave (SMP or whatever)

However none of it explicitly says that's the case if there were no pension contributions before the maternity leave started. What happens in this case? Do the employer's contributions start at the staging date at 1% of the PRE-maternity-leave pay? And the employee's contribution at 0.8% of SMP?

Thanks for any advice!

xylophone · 10 July 2015 at 5:05PM

http://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/extranet/literature/doc/FP0400

Presumably the employer would enrol the employee, base his contribution on the pre leave salary and the employee's on the maternity payment?

AEGuru · 12 July 2015 at 8:46PM

Hi all, if you are on maternity when your company reaches its staging date then you won't be auto-enrolled into the scheme (assuming you receive SMP and not a higher figure paid from company) so nothing to worry about. When you come back to work you'll be assessed then and then auto enrolled into the scheme

AE Guru. If you have in questions please feel free to dm me

ozzage · 20 July 2015 at 12:53PM

Hi AEGuru

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the response.

Given your answer I think I need to add more details to get an accurate answer. You've said that she won't be auto-enrolled (which actually IS something to worry about in my mind but I appreciate that it's a matter of perspective). Is that based on the fact that she's on maternity leave or purely on the fact that her earnings are less than the threshold for auto-enrolment?

If it's the latter, then the following is probably important: the maternity leave has only started a couple of weeks before the staging date, so she's still in the "90% of pay" period of maternity pay. I'm not entirely sure over which period the qualifying earnings are taken but presumably this means that she will actually be auto-enrolled if it's based on earnings. Certainly in terms of salary she would qualify, even at 90%.

I am rather hoping she'll be auto enrolled and the company must pay based on her pre-maternity leave salary. I'm not sure why this would be a bad thing!

ozzage · 20 July 2015 at 12:57PM

xylophone wrote: »

http://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/extranet/literature/doc/FP0400

Presumably the employer would enrol the employee, base his contribution on the pre leave salary and the employee's on the maternity payment?

I hope so, it's just that most literature doesn't specifically address what happens if somebody is already on maternity leave, with no pension, when the staging date arrives. Even in the link you've provided it says that they need to "continue" payments as per the normal salary. But in this case there have never been any payments to continue...

Staging date while on maternity leave

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free