Today Opra announced in Update 5 that with immediate effect, it no longer expects to hear from trustees about late payment of contributions, unless either

1. they are at least 90 days overdue; or
2. the late payment has raised concerns about the conduct of the employer (eg suspicions that the money is being used to alleviate cashflow difficulties).

The law has not changed, however. The Scheme Administration Regs (SI 1996/1715) allow no more than 19 days for contributions to be passed to trustees, and Reg 16A (1)(a), inserted by SI 2000/679, requires any delay beyond that time to be reported to Opra within the next 30 days. (The only exception, in force from 3 April 2000, waives the reporting requirement if the payment arrives within the 10-day period after the 19th day, AND there has been no more than one such incident during the preceding 12 months.) It is not entirely clear on what authority Opra can encourage trustees to disregard the letter of this law in this way.

Opra reiterates that the requirement contained in Reg 16A (1)(b) still stands, ie to notify scheme members when contributions are paid 60 days (or more) late, within 90 days of the due date. Opra also stresses that employers still have a duty to pay contributions to their scheme in line with the existing legal requirements, and that the new reporting guidelines do not offer a reason or excuse to pay contributions late.

Since its creation by the Pensions Act 1995, Opra has been particularly overburdened by the late payment problem, which during the second half of 2003 still represented over half of all new cases (just as it did four years earlier, although personal pension cases are now included). In Opra's experience, a large proportion of reports have continued to involve isolated and inconsequential breaches of the law, which have been corrected and do not generally represent a significant risk to members' interests.

Coinciding with the April 2000 relaxation, section 10 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 made it easier for Opra to process late payment cases by allowing civil sanctions to be levied as an alternative to time-consuming criminal prosecution (which remains available for those "knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion" of this obligation).