Self-employment

Genuinely self-employed individuals are neither workers nor employees and have few employment rights. They are not entitled to the National Minimum Wage, sick pay or holiday pay, they have to supply their own tools and equipment and they are responsible for their own tax and National Insurance. They are also left out of the new pensions auto-enrolment legislation. In future, their health and safety protection will also be limited, since the forthcoming Deregulation Bill is to exempt many self-employed workers from health and safety regulation.

The self-employed are protected from discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, as long as they are under a contract to work personally.

To be genuinely self-employed, you should genuinely be doing business on your own account, providing services to your own clients and customers. Establishing whether a person is genuinely self-employed requires an examination of all the surrounding circumstances. HMRC has advice on its website as to what amounts to genuine self-employment. HMRC emphasises that employment status is not a matter of choice. It is a matter of law.

Just because someone runs their own business as a self-employed person, this does not mean they cannot simultaneously be a contract worker entitled to holiday pay and rest breaks, where they contract personally to provide their services to another business (The Hospital Medical Group Limited v Westwood [2012] EWCA Civ 1005).