Employing a Personal Assistant

You are the employer

If you use a Direct Payment or a personal health budget to employ someone directly, you are their employer. Not a client, not a service user in someone else's arrangement — the employer, with the same legal duties as any small business that employs one or two people.

Another organisation can run your payroll, write your contracts, recruit for you and keep your records. Oakline does all of those things. None of it transfers the employment relationship. The PA works for you.

That sounds daunting written down. In practice, thousands of people manage it, and the duties are finite and knowable. The problems almost always come from nobody having explained the list — so here it is.

Before you advertise

The most common recruitment mistake is advertising too early — a vague advert produces vague applicants, and then a difficult decision between people who do not quite fit.

Work out first:

• What the person needs to be able to do. Start from the life, not the tasks. "I want to get to my course three days a week and cook for myself in the evening" produces a better role than "personal care and meal preparation".
• The hours, and how fixed they are. Set days and times, or flexible within limits? Evenings, weekends, nights, sleep-ins? Be specific — this is the single biggest reason people decline or leave.
• The rate. What your plan allows, and what is realistic locally. Remember the rate is not the only cost: employer's National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday pay and insurance sit on top.
• What is genuinely essential. A driving licence and use of a car, perhaps. Manual handling experience. Willingness to support with personal care. Comfort around a pet. Be honest about which are essential and which are preferences.
• What you would rather not say but need to. Anything about the household, the routine or the support that someone should know before accepting. It will come out; better on your terms.

Spending an afternoon on this saves weeks later. Write it down, because it becomes the advert, the interview structure and the contract.

Recruiting safely

You are recruiting someone who will work alone with you or the person you care for, often in the home, often with access to keys, money and personal information. Do the checks properly. Every one of them exists because of something that went wrong for somebody else.

Right to work in the UK

Check before employment starts, from original documents or a share code, and keep a dated copy. This is a legal requirement for every employer, including individuals.

DBS check

For roles involving personal care or support for an adult at risk, an enhanced check is normally appropriate. Individual employers cannot apply directly to the DBS; the application has to go through an organisation registered to submit them — a support organisation, an umbrella body or your council's Direct Payment support service.

References

Take up at least two, ideally from employers rather than friends, and actually speak to them. Ask directly whether they would re-employ the person.

Identity and qualifications

See original documents for anything the role requires. A certificate on a phone screen is not a check.

Meeting them properly

More than one conversation where possible, and in the setting where the work will happen if that is comfortable. Include the person who will actually receive the support, in whatever way works for them.

Trust your instincts alongside the paperwork. Someone can clear every check and still be wrong for the role, and that is a legitimate reason not to appoint them.

Contracts and written terms

Employees are entitled to a written statement of employment particulars from their first day. A proper contract protects you as much as it protects them: when something is disputed a year later, whichever side has nothing in writing is the side with a problem.

It should cover, as a minimum:

• Names of employer and employee, the start date, and the job title
• Pay rate, how and when it is paid
• Hours of work, and how any variation or additional hours are handled
• Place of work and any travel expectations
• Holiday entitlement and how it is requested
• Sickness reporting and sick pay arrangements
• Notice periods, both ways
• Confidentiality — a PA will know a great deal about your life
• Pension arrangements
• Disciplinary and grievance procedures, and who to raise a concern with
• Whether there is a probationary period, and how long

Add a short job description as a schedule rather than burying duties in the contract. It is easier to update by agreement as needs change.

Pay, holiday and sickness

Pay

You must pay at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage for the person's age. The rates change, normally in April, so check the current figure rather than relying on last year's. You must operate PAYE — deducting income tax and National Insurance and reporting to HMRC — and provide an itemised payslip on or before payday. See our payroll guide for the mechanics.

Some situations need particular care: sleep-in shifts, travel time between locations, on-call arrangements and time spent training can all affect whether minimum wage requirements are met across the whole period paid for. If your arrangement involves any of these, get it checked rather than assumed.

Holiday

Employees and most workers are entitled to paid annual leave. The entitlement accrues from the start of employment and applies to part-time staff proportionately. Two practical points people miss:

• Holiday pay is a real cost and needs to be in the budget. Check whether your plan accounts for it.
• Cover during holiday is your problem to plan. Decide in advance how it will be handled — a second PA for a few hours, a provider, or family — rather than working it out the week before.

Sickness

A PA who qualifies is entitled to Statutory Sick Pay. Your contract should set out how sickness is reported and what pay applies. Again, the harder question is cover, and again it is worth deciding before it happens.

Pensions and insurance

Workplace pensions

Automatic enrolment duties apply to individual employers of Personal Assistants, not just to businesses. Depending on your PA's age and earnings you may need to enrol them in a workplace pension scheme and make employer contributions, and you have duties to assess and record this even where nobody ends up being enrolled. You also have to re-assess periodically.

This is one of the most commonly missed duties in PA employment, and it is one where penalties exist for getting it wrong. It is also the one most easily handled by a payroll service that does it as a matter of course.

Insurance

Employer's liability insurance is normally required where you employ someone. Specialist policies exist for individual employers of Personal Assistants, and they usually bundle in public liability and access to employment advice — which is often worth more than the insurance itself. Check whether the cost is covered by your plan; frequently it is.

Also check your home insurance and, if your PA will drive your car or their own for your journeys, the motor insurance position. Business use is not automatically covered.

Training, safety and risk

You are responsible for ensuring the person you employ is trained and competent for what you ask them to do. What is appropriate depends on the role, but commonly includes moving and handling, medication support, basic first aid, safeguarding awareness, infection prevention, and anything specific to a health condition.

Two rules make this manageable:

1. Never ask someone to do something they have not been trained for. Willingness is not competence, and a well-meaning attempt at a moving and handling task can injure both of you.
2. Where a task is clinical, it needs sign-off from a health professional. Some health-related tasks can be delegated to a PA, but only with proper instruction, assessment of competence and a record of it.

You also have general health and safety duties as an employer: a safe place to work, equipment that is fit for purpose and maintained, and sensible thought given to the risks in the work. Write down the obvious risks and what you have done about them. It does not need to be a formal document to be useful.

Records you must keep

• Right-to-work check, dated, with a copy of what you saw
• DBS check details — level, date, certificate reference
• References taken up
• Signed contract and any agreed changes
• Timesheets and payslips
• Payroll records and HMRC submissions
• Pension assessments, enrolment and contributions
• Insurance certificate
• Training completed, with dates and expiry dates
• Holiday taken and sickness absence
• Any incidents, and any concerns raised on either side

Keep them somewhere organised and secure — this is personal data about your employee and you have obligations to protect it. If a council review or an HMRC query arrives, this folder is the entire answer.

When things go wrong

Most PA arrangements work. When they do not, the problems are predictable: lateness, tasks not being done, boundaries drifting, a personality clash, or occasionally something more serious.

Deal with it early and in a structured way:

1. Raise it directly and specifically. "You have arrived after 9am four times this month" is actionable; "you are unreliable" is an argument.
2. Agree what changes, and by when. Note it down, even informally.
3. If it does not improve, use your procedure. Your contract should have a disciplinary process. Following it protects you.
4. Get advice before dismissing anyone. Individual employers are most exposed here. Your insurance may include employment advice; use it.

If a concern involves the safety or wellbeing of the person receiving support, that is a safeguarding matter, not a performance issue. Contact the adult safeguarding team at your local authority. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999. Never keep a safeguarding concern inside the employment relationship.

When someone leaves

PAs move on — better hours, a change of circumstances, a different career. A good arrangement plans for it rather than treating it as a crisis.

• Start recruiting as soon as you know, ideally during the notice period
• Calculate final pay, including any accrued untaken holiday
• Issue a final payslip and complete the leaver process for payroll and pension
• Recover keys, equipment and anything else belonging to the household
• Update the pension and insurance position
• Ask them honestly why they are leaving — it is the most useful information you will get

If you can, keep a small amount of flexibility in the arrangement permanently: a second PA doing a few hours a week is the single most effective protection against a gap becoming a crisis.

Where Oakline fits

We take on the parts of this that are administrative, and we support you with the parts that have to remain yours.

We can recruit and check PAs, prepare contracts and written terms, run payroll including PAYE, National Insurance, statutory pay and pension duties, coordinate training and keep the records. We can talk you through a difficult conversation and tell you when a situation needs employment law advice rather than our view.

What we do not do is become the employer. You remain the employer, with the legal duties described here; our job is to make them manageable rather than to absorb them. We are not a financial, tax or legal adviser, and we are not registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide regulated personal care.

Tell us what stage you are at — whether that is "I have just been offered a Direct Payment" or "this has been running badly for two years".

General information, not advice.Employment law, minimum wage rates, pension thresholds and statutory pay change. This guide is not legal, tax or financial advice. Check current requirements and take suitable advice before acting, particularly on dismissal, sleep-in shifts or pension duties.