On the go: The Pensions Ombudsman has ordered an employer to pay contributions into an employee’s Nest pension, more than three years after deductions had been made from his pay.
The applicant, Mr S, complained that since being employed by JLE Havant, his employer had failed to pay the correct contributions into his Nest pension, and for a period had failed to make employer contributions at all.
Mr S was employed by JLE and enrolled into Nest in June 2018, and left employment in September 2019. As part of Mr S’s auto-enrolment into Nest, monthly deductions were taken from his salary and paid to Nest. JLE also made employer contributions.
But the ombudsman’s adjudicator concluded that there had been “maladministration” on the part of JLE, with Nest confirming that no contributions had been paid into Mr S’s account since April 2019.
In January 2020, JLE confirmed that a total of £591.34 in employee and employer contributions remained outstanding and a schedule had been arranged to make these missing payments.
At the date the adjudicator’s opinion was issued, no progress had been made in remedying the situation. Nest also confirmed to the ombudsman that a repayment plan was not in place.
The ombudsman concluded that JLE should pay Mr S £1,000 for the “serious distress and inconvenience JLE has caused him”, and should produce a schedule of all employee contributions deducted during his employment.
JLE must then establish with Nest whether the late payment of contributions resulted in fewer units being bought on behalf of Mr S than would have been bought if the contributions had been paid on time. Should a shortfall be identified, JLE has been ordered to remedy this shortfall within 21 days.
In his concluding directions, ombudsman Anthony Arter acknowledged the “difficult trading times” facing many small businesses.
“Nonetheless, Mr S was owed this money and it was unreasonable for him to have to wait three years before JLE made any attempt to pay it to his Nest account,” he said.
“My awards for non-financial injustice are not linked to the magnitude of the financial loss the applicant has suffered. They reflect the time and effort that an applicant has had to spend in pursuing their complaint and also the distress they have suffered.”
