Sporta members have joined forces to buy in expert advice ahead of the Automatic Enrolment into workplace pensions, being phased in between now (October 2012) until 2018, dependent on employer size.

The Pensions Act 2008 means that all employers are required to automatically enrol eligible employees into a qualifying pension scheme and make contributions to that scheme.

sporta's collaborative pensions advice project, which has been underway since the beginning of the year, has seen more than a third of its members pay into a fund to access top level pensions advisors, Punter Southall.

The project is managed by a panel of seven trusts, which includes Lynn Murray, Director of Corporate Services at Scottish-based leisure trust Active Stirling, who championed the setting up of the scheme. "Being able to afford to appoint top pension advisers has been a big advantage," she said. "Taking advice may have been cost prohibitive for smaller Trusts leaving them potentially exposed, but working collectively has kept the cost massively down."

Active Stirling has around 400 employees, 250 of which are coaches and relief staff that aren't currently entitled to join the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). Murray believes the benefits of a collaborative scheme, for both the trust and its employees, are widespread.

"The cost implications of enrolling everyone in LGPS if the sporta scheme weren't available would be significant and there would be huge pressure on the budget in coming years," she said. "So we wanted to find an alternative that would give us the ability to control costs, lower our pension contributions and still enable us to provide a quality scheme, all in place prior to auto-enrolment. All employees will now have access to a quality pension scheme, and even those entitled to join LGPS can choose to join the sporta scheme if they want a pension but wish to pay less in contributions."

Mark Symons, Managing Director of Tandridge Trust in Surrey, one of the smaller members within the scheme, has 240 employees and is due to start auto enrol in April 2014. "Given that what we all do is likely to be the same, we felt that the smaller trusts should be able to benefit from the buying powers of sporta as a group. Even the smallest trust would have to pay up to £25,000 for the specialist advice required to meet the challenge of auto-enrolment and this economic solution gives general advice with the option to purchase additional specific advice if required.

"Whilst I had no special knowledge at the start, I wanted to ensure that smaller trusts were represented within the project and that issues that affect us were taken into account in the commissioning. For instance, we closed our LGPS to new joiners a number of years ago and now have just 16 ‘live' members left. We have not been receiving a good service from our provider and needed advice on what to do with those remaining members. As with most trusts, we have a very high proportion of young workers, and of zero-hour contracts, so have a high degree of complexity, despite the relatively small number of workers."

GLL, the UK's largest leisure trust, which manages more than 115 facilities and employs around 6,000 people, is an enthusiastic supporter of sporta and the opportunities it provides for like minded organisations to share expertise and realise economies of scale.

Philip Donnay, Director of Finance & Business Administration at GLL said: "Individual trusts would not be able to afford this level of consultancy and project management, which will provide invaluable information to Trusts in understanding the new legislations, but also a ‘best in class' pension scheme for the greater benefit of employees.

"Auto enrolment is something all organisations need to address. For some time, we have been considering what pensions provision we wanted and could afford. We want to be good employers but in order to be that, we need to be financially viable. By collaborating we have been able to pool our expertise, share the cost of excellent actuarial advice and use our collective purchasing power to commission a scheme that meets our needs."

The 36 trusts within the scheme represent more than 10,000 members of staff, making the contract far more attractive to well known pension providers, and advisor Punter Southall is now approaching suitable providers to find the best deal for sporta members.

Members of the scheme will now decide the terms under which other sporta members can join the project. Anyone wishing to join the scheme should contact Brian Leonard, CEO of sporta, at [email protected].