Genuine self-employment 


The genuinely self-employed are not workers or employees. Instead they are businesses operating on their own account, doing business at arms-length with other businesses and with their own customers, taking the business risk of failure and the financial rewards of success. They can employ their own staff and sub-contract work to others. 




The genuinely self-employed do not qualify for statutory employment rights such as the National Minimum Wage, sick pay or holiday pay. They must supply their own tools and equipment and are responsible for their own tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).
They are also left out of pension auto-enrolment (see Chapter 4), which has created another spur for false self-employment.
The genuinely self-employed must make their own retirement provision except for the state pension, which they receive if they have paid enough years of NICs (see Chapter 4).



Since 1 October 2015, their health and safety protection has also been weakened, in a change to the law described by the TUC as one of the most dangerous pieces of health and safety deregulation ever enacted (Section 1, Deregulation Act 2015). Self-employed individuals whose activities pose no risk to the health and safety of others are no longer covered by health and safety law unless their activities are specifically listed in a schedule to the new regulations, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (General Duties of Self-Employed Persons) (Prescribed Undertakings) Regulations 2015. The listed activities are agriculture, asbestos, construction, gas, genetically modified organisms and railways.


See also page 37: Identifying false self-employment.