ROBERT PERCY would never intentionally break the law.
The entrepreneur and managing director of North Lincolnshire Care, a nursing home business, has always endeavoured to keep abreast of the myriad of Government regulations imposed on him ¡ª including the requirement to provide staff with access to a stakeholder pension scheme.
When Britannic Assurance, his provider, wrote to his business, in Brigg, North Lincolnshire, last month, explaining that it had withdrawn from the stakeholder market, he was not anxious.
He assumed that he could continue to fulfil his legal obligations by taking up with another insurer.
However, Mr Percy did not expect that his scheme ¡ª into which only two of his 75 employees contribute ¡ª would fail to qualify as a viable prospect for other insurers.
After a month-long search and endless telephone calls, both by him and his insurance broker, Mr Percy has decided to give up.
He recognises that he could now face a £50,000 fine from Opra, the pensions watchdog ¡ª a fine he cannot afford ¡ª but he can find no solution.
¡°I have been searching for a month, but if everyone is turning me down there is little I can do about it, other than carry on without a scheme in place,¡± Mr Percy said.
¡°I realise that, with so few employees paying into the scheme, insurers don¡¯t think I am a worthwhile prospect. But my staff are simply not interested in the schemes.¡±
He suspects that the Government will have little sympathy for him and the other businesses in his situation. ¡°I have no doubt that they will turn around to me and tell me that it is my problem and that I have to deal with it,¡± he said.
Stephen Hansard, co-director of Hansard Haulage, a haulage company in Caister, Lincolnshire, is also struggling to find a provider.
With only days to go until his present scheme expires, he fears he also will be forced to break the law and face the £50,000 penalty.
¡°When stakeholders were introduced by the Government everyone seemed to be vying for my business. Now no one wants to take me on,¡± he said.
The insurers he had approached had told him that they would provide schemes to businesses only where at least ten employees paid in, he said. However, as with 90 per cent of companies, Mr Hansard¡¯s scheme is a ¡°shell¡± scheme ¡ª a scheme into which no employees pay.
¡°They have their own arrangements so they are not interested in this,¡± he said.
The time that he had spent desperately ringing around insurers and worrying about the fine he faced if he failed to find a provider was something he could have done without, he said. ¡°I have enough to deal with, simply running my business. I do not need this to worry about as well.¡±
His concern now is that, in a bid to resolve the growing crisis, the Government will force employers to contribute into the schemes.
¡°For a small company like mine, that would be impossible. I simply could not afford it,¡± he said.
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