A bus company and its managing director have admitted to trying to deliberately avoid giving their employees workplace pensions, and now must pay more than £60,000.
In November, Oldham bus company Stotts Tours and Alan Stott pleaded guilty to a total of 16 offences of willfully failing to comply with the law on occupational pensions. This is the first such prosecution by the Pensions Regulator.
Stotts Tours should have put its staff into a workplace pension and begun paying pension contributions from June 2015.
On February 7 they appeared at Brighton Magistrates’ Court for sentencing. Stotts Tours was ordered to pay a £27,000 fine, £7,400 costs and a £120 victim surcharge. Alan Stott was ordered to pay a £4,455 fine and a £120 victim surcharge.
This is on top of the £14,400 in civil fines the employer already owes for failing to comply with the law on auto-enrolment.
Stotts Tours must also pay an estimated £10,000 in backdated pension contributions for its employees, as well as paying all ongoing contributions that fall due, or they will face further enforcement action from the watchdog.
Darren Ryder, the regulator's director of auto-enrolment, said: “Compliance with automatic enrolment remains very high and so it’s extremely disappointing that a tiny minority of employers continue to flout the law by denying their staff the pensions they are entitled to."
