Nanny leaving

[Countessofgranthamm]

Nanny leaving who has been with us 3 and a half years. Is it unreasonable to just give gift and a card or is it customary to give money too? We are moving overseas for DP work so I suppose we are technically the ones leaving! She is the first nanny we have had to unsure of the customs?

You are leaving, not your nanny, thus making her role redundant. Giving her redundancy pay, is the right thing to do, surely??

Having researched the relevant law on this recently and with quite a lot of legal qualifications and experience unless you have been very careful not to oblige set days work/ allow the employee to send a suitable replacement in or decline the task this is an employee you are making redundant. A well drafted self employment contract even if it existed would need to be followed in practice. Its pretty basic law designed to avoid exploitation in calling someone self employed to avoid all the rules and regs of employment. If it was that easy every organisation would do the same thing.

Just depends how the contracts are written.

Looking forward to hearing about all these well drafted contacts....

This is very different information I had from Child services at my local council yesterday. I telephoned and asked several different questions surrounding this as im looking into it for someone - to particularly work in their home but with the possibility of getting funding.

They said a childminder could work in the Childs home - that it would need to be inspected and that if registered as a childminder then it would still count as a childminder and the parents would be able to get the free funded hours - which a nanny can't get.

As a registered nanny the parents can get tax relief but not the funded hours, as a registered nanny the registration is different from registering as a childminder

You, though are saying that if a childminder works in the Childs home they are a nanny - which would then mean the funded hours wouldn't be paid as they then become a nanny?

Well, yes. Why do you think there are not? People whose jobs become unnecessary get redundancy pay; that's the whole point of it. Not a large percentage of people have nannies in the first place.

The situation with childminders looking after several kids is of course very different, and far more prevalent.

No because those are genuinely one off tasks that the babysitter can choose to accept or not at the time

Whether technically you owe her redundancy or not I think morally you do.

She has been with you for quite a while.

Her job, whether legally contracted or not, is coming to an end through your choice. (To move away)

Incidental to this you may also find yourself responsible for other employment on costs - mainly NI.

Let us know what you decide. Thanks

🤔 Well, yes, nannies are often made redundant when children reach school age. Why would you think they wouldn't? Good nannies are usually snapped up again for FT roles immediately.

Yes I have been made redundant twice in my nanny employment. One where the child went to boarding school, the other when the parents wanted to change the role to an after school position. I am still on good terms with both of those families, because they paid up what I was were due- I obviously was out of a job! That is what redundancy pay is for, to shore up against a gap of employment resulting from your role becoming obsolete.

Also you could always have a fixed term employment contract, that would be legal.

well yes

its the redundancy part

Ive worked where people have been shipped in for a years contract but been employed - they are not then made redundant at the end of their contract, so had thought that it would be much along the same lines. They are just let go as the contract of x amount of time has ended - so no pay out

"Birth certificatey"???
She's their mum!

On here I've seen stepmothers who have the kids in their house more than 50%, do all the childcare for the kids, running after them, cooking and cleaning, told they're not the kids mum and that they mean nothing to them, the kids didn't have a choice to be cared for by an unrelated adult etc etc .. (because of course the man is working etc etc)

But suddenly when it's a nanny the mother is being "birth certificatey"??????

Your DH is his mothers son, not yours, so if he left you you have no right to be upset??

you've paid her illegally & you now say she has no right to be upset the children are moving away.

FMD

One wonder how some people earn enough money to pay a Nanny.

That's a fixed term contract, and is perfectly straightforward - both parties know the end date when they go in so no redundancy is required. Nannies are often on a permanent contract with no end date though - mine was, because when we hired her we had one very small DC and during the course of her employment we had another one, who subsequently grew up and reached school age. So when we no longer needed FT nanny hours, we followed the appropriate process to make her redundant. There are also limits to how long a FTC can last - after four years with the same employer, an employee legally becomes permanent no matter what their initial contract was.

The Ofsted registration is not different for a "nanny" or a "child minder".

https://www.nannypaye.co.uk/help-centre/advice-for-employers/tax-free-childcare#:~:text=Tax%2DFree%20Childcare%20enables%20working,the%20government%20paying%20money%20in.

Yes fixed term contracts are totally different, if you know you have six months before your current job ends then you know you have to find another job and can tell prospective employers when you
Will be available. A nanny on a permanent contract can’t do this.

Unless you know for sure that you only need a nanny for 12-18 months, because you're moving abroad/DC is nearly school age or whatever, though, most nanny employers probably wouldn't want to put their nanny on a FTC anyway, because you'd risk being left without childcare when you needed it and a big part of the point of having a nanny anyway is to have a stable, long-term person who is invested in your DC. Plus good nannies are in demand in most places and so you'd have to pay more to make a FTC attractive, quite possibly making it more expensive than just paying redundancy if needed.

There are specific HMRC rules regarding what qualifies as self-employment and what doesn't. If you know lots of people who are paying their staff as self-employed when they're not actually self-employed then you know a lot of people who are breaking the law. Which might explain your attitude.

how do you expect bins to be collected, roads to be fixed, NHS, schools etc to be paid for if people don’t pay their share

The almost deranged glee on here at attempting to ‘catch someone out’ is truly something else.

OP has not given one jot of information on the set up with this person, other than calling her a ‘nanny’ and that they are parting ways.

No one has any idea where she cares for the child(ren), what hours, what days, the terms of service – nothing. A multi-page thread calling her out is fiction and nothing more. And more likely a pile on due to plain old MN nastiness.

We have both employed nannies and used self-employed nannies for our kids. All completely above board with an agreement from HMRC that the nature of the work met requirements for being self-employed. My DH worked for HMRC for a decade.

The assumption here that either nanny or the OP is too stupid to have dealt with this issue already is mind blowing.

As others appear to have said, I’d check what your legal and financial obligations are in terms of terminating your contract with her.

Even if you’re not legally required to pay redundancy or severance pay, I’d consider this if you value her and she’s been reliable and good for your kids. Even if she gets another job for when you leave, she may want a couple of weeks off in between, or the new job may not work out, so a financial cushion might be helpful to her.

Now taking bets whether OP will return to thread....

I believe queries over stupidity started with the titling of the thread and the original question itself...

@MellowCritic don't you think its a bit unwise to risk being reported for tax evasion for a pretty obvious and basic move whilst making it easy for an employee to sue you for mismanagement or redundancy? That is not make believe land and it really isn't as straightforward forward that self employed nannies are allowed in this jurisdiction, I don't think its the posters you disagree with that need to be more in touch with reality.