The number of employees automatically enrolled into workplace pensions now exceeds four million, and more than 21,000 employers have registered as compliant with auto-enrolment.

New figures from The Pensions Regulator show 8.6 million employees were already members of qualifying schemes when their workplaces registered. More than 420,000 staff were covered by transitional arrangements related to defined benefit or hybrid schemes.

Over 4.44 million workers did not fall into these categories for a variety of reasons, but some will be involved in workplace pensions through previous employers or already drawing from an occupational pension while remaining in the workforce.

Pensions Minister Steve Webb said the latest figures show that workplace saving is now “becoming the norm”.

"Four million people have now been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension with many more saving for their retirement for the first time or saving more as a result."

Auto-enrolment started with the country’s largest employers from late 2012. Medium-sized employers have been staging from April this year, and small and micro employers will need to start meeting auto-enrolment duties from the middle of next year.

The regulator’s executive director of automatic enrolment Charles Counsell said there is a wide mix of employers now meeting their auto-enrolment duties, illustrating how the new system is “gradually becoming part of the fabric of running every type of workplace”.

“This summer, we have begun the process of writing to hundreds of thousands of small employers informing them when they need to be ready to meet their new workplace pension duties,” Counsell said. “This letter is a call to action for employers. It directs them to the information they need to prepare for automatic enrolment.”

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