has started writing to employers who only employ one or two people to tell them about Automatic Enrolment. The letter obviously got the address from HM Revenue & Customs PAYE Department, but it fails to explain this. This is discourteous in any normal perception. No doubt there is some law which entitles the Pensions Regulator to get hold of this information, but ordinary good manners warrant disclosure of how a name and address was obtained regardless.

Pension Scheme No 1 is just the basic State Pension. Pension Scheme No 2 was called Graduated Pension, and then State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS), and then State Second Pension (S2P). Automatic Enrolment is Pension Scheme No 3, and looks like quite an empire. If the Pensions Regulator wants employers to cooperate with it, then better standards of behaviour are suggested.

David Porthouse & Co are Carlisle accountants serving clients in Cumbria and North West England. They have a substantial interest in new technology and have developed an optical number recognition/datepoint system for scanning bank statements, with the intention of ameliorating the cost of accounts preparation. They also have a spreadsheet system which can be e-mailed back and forth between the accountant and clients. In addition, they have now developed an online quotation system for instant quoting.