The Pensions Regulator has begun spot checks in South Wales this week as part of its nationwide auto-enrolment enforcement campaign.

In order to ensure that employers are complying with their pension duties, TP launched the campaign in London in April. To date it has carried out short-notice inspections in Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Edinburg and Glasgow.

In Wales, inspection teams will be visiting dozens of businesses in Cardiff, Newport, Caerphilly, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cyon Taf to check that employers have met their auto-enrolment duties.

The regulator has said the checks will help it to understand whether employers are facing any unnecessary challenges that it can assist with, in addition to taking enforcement action and issuing notices to employers who have not become or remained compliant with their auto-enrolment requirements.

Inspections are carried out under section 74 of the Pensions Act 2004; TPR teams are to continue to visit other towns and cities across the UK in the coming weeks. Employers are notified about an inspection within days before the visit, with those being visited including organisations that the regulator suspects may not be compliant or those at risk of becoming non-compliant in future.

TPR director of automatic enrolment Darren Ryder said: "The vast majority of employers are continuing to become compliant ahead of their deadline but these visits help us to identify why some have not, so we can take action where we need to.

"Every employer has workplace pension duties and we are determined that every worker gets the pension they are entitled to.

"Automatic enrolment is not an option, it’s the law. Where we find employers are not complying with the law, we will use our powers to make them comply."

To date, more than 690,000 UK employers have met their auto-enrolment duties, with over eight million employees saving into a workplace pension as a result.

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