Eastern Transport Holdings Limited is a holding company which controls two trading subsidiaries that provide bus services, namely Stephensons of Essex Limited and Nisbuses Limited.

Eastern Transport Holdings Limited was recently sold by its former 100% stakeholder, Bill Hiron MBE, to become a 100% employee owned group, through ETH Trustee Limited.

The transition of ownership from the former stakeholder to the employee trust in part required the amalgamation of thirteen different payrolls, covering 200 employees, into just two operational payrolls, one for each independent trading entity.

The transition involved formal TUPE consultation with the employees, and a series of detailed and legally relevant correspondence items to meet the challenge of updating 200 people fairly, on a timely basis and as close to simultaneously as possible.

As the majority of employees are paid weekly, the transition had to take place over the course of a single pay week, mid year processing, and the newly constituted payrolls had to be set up, ready for processing and registered with HMRC and the Pensions Regulator as well as the designation of Auto Enrolment providers.

Barrons initially scoped the assignment, identifying the need for meticulous pre-planning of the implementation through our Head of Payroll, Tina Pontin, and our client.

We secured the relevant registrations prior to the transitional week, notifying and communicating with all interested parties to the payrolls themselves in advance to ensure that areas such as Auto Enrolment were in place and functional in advance.

We were able to assist the client in their communication processes by utilising employee confidential portals to send all communications to ensure all employees received the same data at the same time.

Meanwhile, one of our Payroll Managers, Emily Hunt, commenced the transfer of standing data to specially created “holding files” pending the completion of the consultation outcome – these files were ultimately used to automate the amalgamation of the thirteen payrolls down to two seamlessly over the course of a few days.

The payrolls ran seamlessly the following week post transfer.

Bill Hiron, the Group Chairman said:

‘The assistance of Barrons in navigating the transition of around 200 staff from multiple payrolls into just two, from consultation correspondence, through pensions, to actual ‘go live’ payments was crucial to the change in structure. Errors with either communications or indeed payments due in the first week of the new ownership structure would have been seriously bad news, as well as causing potential hardship to many of our staff. I knew from previous experience that the Barrons payroll team would get it right, and I was proved correct!’.