Employers spot - holiday pay and leave for Personal Assistants/ care support workers

If you directly employ people to help you, rather than using an agency, you must make sure that they get all the holiday they are entitled to.

By law, every employee (not workers who are self employed) is entitled to 5.6 working weeks paid holiday a year, even if they have only just started working for you. If you get a PB to use to employ people you must make sure that your Personal Budget has enough money to cover this when the support plan is drawn up.

How much do I pay them?
You have to pay the same amount per hour as they would be recieving if they were at work. So if they usually earn £8 per hour when they work for you, you also have to pay £8 and hour as holiday pay.

How many days holiday are they entitled to?
If they work 1 day a week they are entitled to 5.6 days off,
If they work 2 days a week, this is 11.2
If they work 3 days a week this goes up to 16.8 days off
If they work 4 days a week they can get 22.4 days off
And if they work 5 days of the week they can get 28 days off.

If they work 6 days though, they can still only get  28 days holiday (the only exception is if the employer provides a better package but this is usually in larger organisations rather than individuals employing care workers).

You can also work out how much holiday someone is entitled to in hours, for example if they always work 15 hours a week but the number of days they do changes. The web link below can help with this.

Why are they allowed paid leave?
The government recognises that it is not health to work all the time. Workers must take at least 4 weeks leave (the other 1.6 working weeks leave can be carried over if you allow this etc).

What about if they don't work for me for a whole year - how do I work out how much holiday they are entitled to?
If someone doesn't work for you for a whole year you have to give them a proportion of the full amount of holiday - there is a holiday entitlement calender that you can use to help you work this out http://online.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/logicToolStart?itemId=1079427397&r.l1=1073858787&r.l2=1084822788&r.l3=1084822795&r.l4=1079427399&type=BLTTOOL

Can I ask my worker (or can my worker ask) to work all of their normal hours and have the holiday pay on top, as a sort of bonus?
In the past you could - NOW YOU CAN'T. Holidays are there for health and safety reasons and offering payment instead of taking the time off encourages people not to take the time off. This is dangerous to the worker and could be for you! If a worker doesn't take their holiday entitlement they lose it.

The ONLY time you can pay if they haven't taken their holiday is when they leave employment with you - you have to make sure that their last pay packet contains any money owed to them for holiday that hasn't been taken.

Do tax office need to know if someone is getting Holiday Pay?
Yes and no.
YES - Holiday pay counts as earnings even though they aren't actually at work- so you have to make sure the Tax man knows about any holiday pay you give. For example, if a person usually works 5 days a week (at £100 a day or £500 a week), but on this particular week they work 3 days and take 2 days as holiday - they would get 3 days normal pay (£300) and 2 days holiday pay (£200) which is they amount they would have earned anyway if they hadn't taken holiday. It is important, when you or a payroll company is calculating the wages and payments to the tax office, that the holiday pay is included in the calcualtions.

NO -You don't have to tell the tax office seperately how many days, or how much, holiday pay a person gets - just their overall earnings including holiday pay.
Of course if you have any questions you can always email or call the PB Team.