Topping up your State Pension contributions, disposing electronic devices securely, fraud prevention for charities and duty changes for the alcohol industry
Today’s blog post covers a wide variety of topics, from topping up your contributions to your State Pension, to how to ensure cyber criminals can’t access your sensitive data once you’ve disposed of your old electronics. Plus, a warning for charities to protect themselves from fraud, and upcoming duty changes for the alcohol industry.
Would you benefit from a top up contribution to your State Pension?
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have revealed that 37,000 people have plugged gaps in their National Insurance (NI) record since last April, boosting the amount of State Pension they will receive when they reach retirement age.
The amount of State Pension you will receive is based on how many completed years you have in your NI record. Currently it is possible to review your record going back to 2006, and where there is a gap, you can contribute to plug the gap and ensure that you maximise the amount of State Pension that will be available to you.
There is limited time to be able to do this though. From 6 April 2025, you will only be able to make voluntary NI contributions for the previous 6 tax years. This means there is now less than two months left to be able to plug any gaps that go back to 2006.
HMRC have an online service that allows you to check and view any gaps in your NI record, calculate the difference any payment will make to your State Pension and then make a payment for the years you would like to top up.
If you would like any help in finding out whether you have any missing years and how much benefit you could get from a top up, please contact us and we would be happy to help you!
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/35-million-added-to-state-pension-pots
How do you make sure data cannot be recovered from storage media?
When it comes to disposing of computer equipment, how do you make sure that any storage media – hard drives, SSDs, flash drives and so forth – can’t be read by unauthorised users or have the data recovered?
These days practically every electronic item contains some form of electronic storage media. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reports that there have even been examples where several gigabytes of sensitive documents were retrieved from decommissioned photocopiers and printers.
The NCSC has reviewed and republished guidance on sanitising and disposing of storage media. Here’s a brief review of some of the key points.
Sanitising storage media
The NCSC recommends that any media that has stored data that’s sensitive to your business should be sanitised before it is disposed of. Just pressing ‘delete’ on your computer is not enough.
If the storage media isn’t sanitised there are risks that any sensitive data on it could be recovered by competitors or used for criminal activities.
Selling or disposing of the equipment would be situations you might automatically think of. NCSC advises that sanitising storage media is also needed when reallocating equipment to a different user or being returned to a supplier for repair.
Before sanitising
NCSC advise that it is best to understand your data and know which items of equipment contain what data. This will help you identify any potentially more sensitive items of equipment.
Having a re-use and disposals policy in place is important and NCSC provides a sample policy that you can use. It is useful to understand what the eventual sanitisation requirements will be as part of your decision-making process for buying equipment.
Is the data encrypted?
Where the device has an encryption option, that has been activated, this can make life simpler. For example, Bitlocker is available on Windows and FileVault on macOS. These usually have a ‘factory reset’ option that deletes the encryption keys and makes the data unreadable. Once this has been done, NCSC says there is then minimal risk to sensitive data.
This does not mean that the reset procedure can guarantee that all user data has been rendered unreadable. However, NCSC advises that a ‘factory reset’ on an encrypted device will provide a satisfactory level of assurance.
If the data is not encrypted, then there is a need to overwrite and verify the overwrite. There are commercial tools available that can do this.
Where it cannot be assured that storage media has been wiped, or there is a residual risk that a skilled, well-funded laboratory could recover data, then it may be necessary to physically destroy the media. NCSC advises destroying the media to particles of 6mm or less.
For further information, please see the guidance.
Charity Commission warns charities about fraud prevention
The Charity Commission has issued a warning reminder to large, incorporated charities about changes to the law on preventing fraud. A new failure to prevent fraud offence will come into force on 1 September 2025 for all large organisations, including charities.
Who does this apply to?
This new offence is introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and will affect large, incorporated charities that meet two of the following three criteria:
- More than 250 employees.
- More than £36m of income.
- More than £18m in total assets.
What is the change?
Where an employee, agent, subsidiary, or other “associated person”, commits fraud that intends to benefit the organisation (or its clients) and the organisation did not have reasonable fraud measures in place, the organisation may be criminally liable under the new law.
Guidance has been published on the new offence, which can be read here. This guidance has been published by the Home Office after consulting with the Scottish Government and Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.
If you would like any help with reviewing your approach to fraud prevention, please get in touch. We would be happy to help you!
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/failure-to-prevent-fraud-offence-regulatory-alert
Rises to national minimum wage confirmed
Legislation was laid before Parliament last week confirming that the new National Living Wage and new Minimum Wage rates will take effect from 1 April 2025.
While many businesses are feeling and have expressed concern about the increases, the sight of the legislation suggests that no reprieve is in sight.
As a reminder, the National Living Wage will increase to £12.21 from 1 April. This is a 6.7% increase and will be worth £1,400 a year to an eligible full-time worker.
The National Minimum Wage for 18-20 year olds will increase to £10.00 an hour. For an eligible full-time worker, this will work out to an extra £2,500 a year.
An impact assessment published on the same day the legislation was laid indicates that these increases will put around £1.8 billion into the pockets of workers over the next six years.
While these measures will benefit many workers, you may be concerned about the anticipated cost of this increase causing problems for your business.
If you need help costing out what the increases will cost you and advice on the potential strategies you have to manage these costs, please get in touch and we would be happy to help you!
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/april-pay-rise-set-to-boost-pockets-of-over-3-million-workers
Duty changes for the alcohol industry
February saw changes for the alcohol industry come into force that particularly affected winemakers.
A temporary easement has been in place for wine that has treated wines with an alcohol by volume (abv) between 11.5% and 14.5% as if their abv was 12.5%. It was announced in the 2024 Autumn Budget that the easement would end on 1 February 2025.
There have been calls to make the easement permanent, however the government has confirmed that the easement would end as planned.
This means that the wine duty for all wine will now be based on its alcoholic strength. The duty rate changes at each 0.5% abv, meaning that there are now 30 different payable amounts replacing the single rate under the easement. Wines with an abv below 11.5% and above 14.5% were already being taxed by strength and this will continue.
In addition to this change, duty rates on all non-draught alcohol products rose in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) from February 2025.
Small producers of non-draught products have seen an increase in their cash discount to bring them in line with the relief for draught products.
There has also been a 1p duty cut for draught pints.
These changes mean that there could be benefits for businesses in the hospitality trade from using small producers. Higher strength wines will become more expensive and so businesses will need to be alert to ensure that costs are passed on appropriately.
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-the-rates-of-alcohol-duty