Postponement

What is postponement?

Postponement is a period in which you can delay the Automatic Enrolment process for all workers, a group of workers or a single worker, until a date chosen by you. This date is known as the Deferral Date. You can apply postponement to a worker for up to 3 months from any one of these dates:

• Your company’s duties start date (New companies only).

• The first day of a worker’s employment.

• The date the worker meets the criteria to become an Eligible Jobholder.

Why would you use postponement?

There are several reasons why you may choose to apply postponement:

Date postponement applied from	Reasons to apply postponement
Your company’s duties start date (New companies only)	To align with your company’s processes, e.g. financial year. To align with the payroll tax year. To avoid a busy period in your company’s year.
First day of a worker’s employment	Worker is a temporary or seasonal worker and will not be with the company long, e.g. working over the Christmas period. During the worker’s probationary period.
Date the worker meets the criteria to become an Eligible Jobholder	To avoid one-off spikes in earnings, e.g. a bonus payment. The worker won’t meet the criteria to be an Eligible Jobholder in the future, e.g. reducing their hours .

The NHS Pension scheme does not allow postponement, you can postpone the alternative scheme only.