Employing a personal assistant factsheet

This factsheet contains a brief overview of your responsibilities if you choose to use your direct payment and become an employer of a personal assistant.

What is a personal assistant?

A personal assistant is a person you employ to help meet your assessed care needs. This could be a person you already know, such as a friend or neighbour, or you could choose to recruit a personal assistant.

Being an employer

If you employ a personal assistant, you must provide a contract of employment and take on the employer's responsibilities for that person.

This means you must register with HMRC as an employer, follow employment law, take out Employer Liability Insurance, and pay income tax and national insurance contributions according to the rules set by HMRC. You may also have to contribute to a workplace pension depending on your personal assistant's income.

It is your responsibility to make sure that you know about and can meet your responsibilities as an employer. We recommend that you contact our Support Service to discuss your responsibilities if you are unsure or need assistance with the recruitment of personal assistants.

You can also find more information on the GOV.UK website.

As part of your responsibility as an employer, you will have to make arrangements to cover holidays, sickness, maternity and other eventualities.

Although the Plymouth City Council and their Support Service will make sure that you are given appropriate information and advice, it is you who is responsible for complying with Employment and Tax Law.

Checking self-employment

A prospective personal assistant may tell you that they are self-employed. This is possible but is rare.

For more information, please read the employment status of personal assistants factsheet.

The regulations about self-employment are complex, and only Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) can decide on someone's employment status.

If a personal assistant describes themselves as self-employed, you should first check their employment status with HMRC, and this can be done online on the GOV.UK website The council's Support Service can also assist you with this.

If it is agreed that they are self-employed, they should:

Provide references
Decide how they work and may make arrangements to send someone else to cover for them
Invoice you for their services
Have their own business insurance
Have their own terms and conditions of business
Provide a contract for you to sign

What can your personal assistants do?

You must write a job description that sets out what, when and how your personal assistant will do the things agreed in your support plan.

It is recommended that you think about any training needs, which you can deliver to them or suggest they have, to make sure they are safe to work in your home. Training can be arranged for your personal assistants via our Direct Payment Support Service, which is operated by Enham Trust.

Money

You must agree how much and when you will pay your personal assistant before they start work. In Plymouth, you must pay at least the National Minimum Wage; discuss this with your Care Manager.

Plymouth City Council commissions a payroll service through Enham Trust Payroll, and you must register with them to produce your personal assistant's payslips and work out the tax and national insurance contributions. They will also manage auto-enrolment in the workplace pension if this is applicable to your personal assistant.

Making changes

If your needs change, ask your personal assistant if they can continue to meet your needs. If they cannot, you should consider other options, such as employing another personal assistant to cover the extra hours.

Contingency plans

As part of your care planning, you will need to consider how your care and support will be met if your personal assistant is off work due to sickness or a holiday, for example. This could be from a family member, friend or neighbour or you may need to use an agency as cover.

DBS Check (Disclosure and Barring Service)

This used to be known as CRB (Criminal Record Bureau). Personal assistants are not regulated in the same way as agency care workers, so if you plan to employ someone and you don't know them, you must do a Disclosure and Barring check. This will highlight any concerns, which may mean you should not employ them. You can do this online, and this can be paid for from your direct payment.

References

To help ensure your safety, you should obtain at least two written references for a new personal assistant, and you should contact these references via telephone to check them.

Who can help me?

Plymouth City Council contracts the Enham Trust to provide a local support service and can help with advertising and recruiting staff.

Additional factsheets

Plymouth City Council has produced the following four factsheets:

More information

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