Self employed or new contract?

[shirley]

Looking for some advice, please bear with me LOL
At the moment I am a support worker 45 hours a month, on roughly £9 an hour, this is paid by Access to work via Enable (help get disabled people back to work) who is the company my contract is with, Enable no longer want to have anything to do with my side, so we have been looking into either using a new company or going self employed.

If I go with new company I get £10.50 an hour, plus holiday pay and a small pension (dont work enough to get sickpay). If I go self employed I get £15 an hour, no sick pay and pay my own NI contributions, and need to put HP away every month. Is there any major downsides of going self employed, the work I do is office based for a Blind Social worker, who has indicated he may be looking to retire in a couple of years.

The other question I have is, Enable obviously dont want to employ me any more so am I basically being made redundant and should I be looking at getting Redundancy money?

Hopefully this makes some sense, xx

[Guest]

I think you are asking the wrong question, it isn’t really about whether there are advantages / disadvantages. That is because we do not get a choice as to whether to be employed or self employed.

You (or more to the point whomever is paying you) need to examine the nature of your engagement and determine what is appropriate and legal.

Things to consider include:

- can you turn work / hours down
- can you pick your own hours
- can you send someone else along instead of you
- do you provide your own tools, equipment, uniform
- do you work for anyone else, are you running a business and are you responsible for its success or failure.

Implications of being incorrectly categorised as self employed will be more serious to the employer / whomever pays you as it means they will have deprived you of your statutory employment protections. However it is also possible it would result in you underpaying NI and I would expect you to be pursued for that.

Below is some guidance.

gov.uk/employment-status...yed-contractor

To your second question, if Enable were previously your employer and you have worked for them for more than two years, then yes you should ask about redundancy pay.

[shirley]

My wages basically come from Access to work who have given my chap the option of using me directly = me going self employed or opting to use an agency who take their share of the £15 an hour, but provide HP . I know I woukld be responsible for any Govt contributions (son spent 5 years in HMRC, so aware of the need to keep records etc).

Even if we go with the agency I have no guarantee of work as I work solely with 1 man and if he retires etc, doubt there would be a position similar to mine. Thanks for your advice xx

[Guest]

Again, this is not a question of options. Your chap does not have an option, he has to abide by the law.

To ensure the law is followed, the nature of the engagement needs to be properly examined. For example can you consider the questions I posted above as a starting point. What would be your answer to each? If your answer to any, some or all of those questions is no then this is not self employment.

Access to work need to comply with law like everyone else and that they have told you that this is a choice does not make it so. There are many high profile examples in case law where an employer has tried to pretend they are not an employer in order to get out of employment responsibilities, Pimlico Plumbers is probably the most famous.