ELTO is a proactive move by the insurance industry to meet its obligations to help those who have suffered injury or disease in the workplace to identify the relevant insurer quickly and efficiently. At the heart of this process is a centralised database – the Employers’ Liability Database (ELD) – which will contain all new and renewed EL insurance policies.
Employer Reference Number (ERN)
The ELD’s ability to provide enquirers with successful trace results will be supported by establishing a unique identifier for employers. ELTO has adopted the Employer Reference Number (ERN) as the most effective unique identifier available.
This is also commonly referred to as ‘Employer PAYE Reference’. Insurance companies will be required to supply the ERN to the ELD for all policies transacted from April 2012.
The following key points have been identified with HMRC regarding the ERN:
- UK businesses employing one or more people are required to have an ERN, which is the reference number for their employees’ income tax and national insurance contributions.
- A tiny minority of employers do not have an ERN. However the only exemption occurs where the employer pays all their employees below the PAYE threshold (£503.00 monthly).
- Each ERN is unique to the employer and will not be replicated. On PAYE records, the format for most numbers allocated since 2001 is NNN/Aznnnnn, where NNN is the 3 digit number for the Tax Office whose catchment area the employer falls into, and Aznnnnn is the ERN, where n is numeric and A and z are letters. For numbers allocated prior to 2001, the format is NNN/Annnnn in the majority of cases.
- The ERN is printed or written on mandatory documents including the P45, P60, P11/D, and on most payslips.
ELTO is a proactive move by the insurance industry to meet its obligations to help those who have suffered injury or disease in the workplace to identify the relevant insurer quickly and efficiently. At the heart of this process is a centralised database – the Employers’ Liability Database (ELD) – which will contain all new and renewed EL insurance policies.
Employer Reference Number (ERN)
The ELD’s ability to provide enquirers with successful trace results will be supported by establishing a unique identifier for employers. ELTO has adopted the Employer Reference Number (ERN) as the most effective unique identifier available.
This is also commonly referred to as ‘Employer PAYE Reference’. Insurance companies will be required to supply the ERN to the ELD for all policies transacted from April 2012.
The following key points have been identified with HMRC regarding the ERN:
- UK businesses employing one or more people are required to have an ERN, which is the reference number for their employees’ income tax and national insurance contributions.
- A tiny minority of employers do not have an ERN. However the only exemption occurs where the employer pays all their employees below the PAYE threshold (£503.00 monthly).
- Each ERN is unique to the employer and will not be replicated. On PAYE records, the format for most numbers allocated since 2001 is NNN/Aznnnnn, where NNN is the 3 digit number for the Tax Office whose catchment area the employer falls into, and Aznnnnn is the ERN, where n is numeric and A and z are letters. For numbers allocated prior to 2001, the format is NNN/Annnnn in the majority of cases.
- The ERN is printed or written on mandatory documents including the P45, P60, P11/D, and on most payslips.