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All the installments of Determining Employment Status are here:

Determining Employment Status Part 1 "The Right of Control"
Determining Employment Status Part 2 "Financial Risk and Reward"
Determining Employment Status Part 3 "Mutuality of Obligation"
Determining Employment Status Part 4 "Substitution"

The Right of Control

Over the next month or so I'm going to be covering more about how the HMRC determines whether you are classed as employed or self employed. I'm not intending this to be just a re-hash of our self-employment guidelines as although they are accurate it's rarely a cut and dried case of you definitely are, or you definitely aren't.

This week I will be focusing on "the right of control".

Having the right of control (or control from hereon in) boils down to the idea that although you may have accepted an assignment, and therefore have to abide by the criteria laid down within it (such as the deadline of the work in question, the specifications that the work has to meet, and any relevant health and safety aspects), you will determine how the assignment is carried out. That means the hours you work (obviously if the site is only open set hours you are not in breach of the control aspect as long as you decide when you start and finish within those hours), you are responsible for making right any part of the assignment that doesn't meet the previously agreed specifications and bear the financial risk for putting it right (I'll be covering the other aspects of financial risk next Friday) and you cannot be moved between jobs without your agreement.

There are of course conditions that could show that you are not in control, and unlike the examples in the previous paragraph most of these are straight forward enough that they don't need too much of an explanation. I am just going to go ahead and list them:

- You may be entitled to receive overtime

- If you can be moved to different sites on demand

- If you are told how to carry out your work

- If you may be entitled to training from the client for the work you do

- If you have to ask permission to take holiday

- If you are entitled to statutory payments like sick or maternity pay again from the client

All of the above show some sort of relinquishment of control or reliance on the client for benefits of some kind, increasing the chances of you being seen as employed by the person or company you have a contract with rather than as an independent self employed contractor.

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This being Children in Need we've been carrying out various fund raising activities all day, from bizarre forms of musical torture to Steve Girdler (who you'll remember from a couple of posts ago) volunteering to be the victim of a leg waxing (and I should add that he is not usually of the leg waxing persuasion) that raised £150 just on it's own. Overall it's been a good day and everyone apart from Steve had some fun whilst raising the money.

That's it for another week, have fun this weekend and speak to you next week

Hugo
14/11/2008