Nanny question - Would we be the ‘employer’

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I’m currently pregnant with my third baby. I work for myself 3 days a week very flexibly around the children. My 2yo is in nursery on my working days and my 4yo goes to school. It works well, I enjoy being fulfilled in my career and still getting to spend lots of time with the kids.

I’ve been thinking about how I will manage my maternity leave or rather lack of it. I had my other children before going self employed.

I think best case scenario would be a nanny or mother’s help for half a day 2 days a week from when baby is a few months old. Say 8 hours a week max. The hours and days could be flexible and I wouldn’t mind if the nanny brought their own child with them. I would almost always be in the house as this is where I work. With these hours I would be able to maintain my pipeline of work and probably have 1 project on the go at a time.

For this kind of low hours, flexible arrangement would we still formally need to be an employer with proper nanny payroll etc?

I find it hard to know where the line is with nanny and babysitter sometimes.

We have a lot of time to work this all out, just trying to get my ducks in a row.

Bump. Ive started asking around local childminders too. I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to afford a nanny.

If you want then to commit to doing 2 half days per week, then yes I would say you should be the employer and contract for that.

If you want to find several people who are flexible about when they work, and you contact them and ask if they can do 4 hours on Monday and Wednesday next week, if they can say no, or if they can say no to Monday but yes to Wednesday and could do 3 hours on Friday, then maybe that fits more with self employment.

If you were employing someone for 8 hours per week at £25 gross per hour, that is £200 gross per week. Employers NI is £15.60 per week.
If you paid £20 gross per hour, £160 per week then £9.60 employers NI.

If monthly pay gets to £833 (£192 week), then pension auto-enrolment applies.

So it depends on how flexible the arrangement really is. I have a two sunday mornings per month job, which is employment. The hours vary, typically 3ish hours per time.
I also do some before/after school care on an ad-hoc basis, which is self employment. They ask for a specific date and I say yes or no to being able to that date. If I cannot do it, they ask someone else.

If you're hiring them and dictating their hours (times, days, how many) then you'd be the employer.

If they pick and choose their hours then they could be self employed, but even then not always.

I’d go for a childminder if you can.

im a rare breed where I was a self employed nanny. We do exist. I did it because it made finding work easier and I used to have multiple families I’d be working for different days all the time. But if they are self employed they tell you the available hours, tell you the holidays they take not request the time off, can technically out source the work to another nanny (not that any decent nanny would do this but it’s legally acceptable).

there has been a big crack down in the exploitation of nannies forced to be self employed so it’s safer to just get a childminder

Strictly speaking yes you would be their employer but if it’s their only job then they would be below the threshold for ni and tax probably though you would need to report it to hmrc, this is a simple process you do monthly. If they were self employed they could in theory send someone else to do their shift, if you would be unhappy with this , they can’t be self employed

Thank you all!

@nannynick I was hoping you’d reply 😁

It’s interesting the idea of having a couple of different people who help out on an ad-hoc basis. This would probably fit around my workflow but is probably harder for baby.

I am also leaning towards just having 9 months off, maternity allowance would allow me to still respond to enquires and do tasks required to keep the business running at a basic level without loosing the allowance which I didn’t know before.

Hi lovely, yes you would still need to employ your nanny - as long as they are working set days and hours they cannot be self-employed. You can use NannyTax or NannyPaye to set up a payroll, they are the most common companies. NannyTax has a 'Nanny Salary Calculator' so you can see what the actual fees would be after deciding on how much you will be paying your nanny. :)

I think you will struggle to find a nanny for two half days per week to be fair . Also not many childminders do half days . Could you look for one full day . I think you might find a nanny who works the other days for another family or a childminder . But yes Nannie’s earn £18-£20 per hour so a childminder is cheaper .

If I’m honest best case scenario was I would ask around and hope a friend of a friend who was also off with a young child might want to earn some extra money. I’m friends with a lot of teachers (or former teachers) with young kids so I think like I said that would be the ideal scenario in me head and probably makes things cheaper!

Or a student who wants to earn extra money around studies. We don’t live in a city where a lot of people have nanny’s but there are a lot of students!

I would also want to make sure everything is done legally though! Aside from it being the right thing to do I would risk being struck off professionally if I fiddled the system.

This sounds like a really sensible and thought-through plan, and it’s great you’re thinking it through early.

The short answer is that if someone is providing regular childcare in your home (even low hours), HMRC generally considers them a nanny rather than a babysitter, which usually means you’re classed as an employer and need payroll/NI set up. Babysitters tend to be ad hoc and irregular.

That said, lots of people do exactly what you’re describing — especially when they’re at home working — and there are options like mother’s help roles, or using a self-employed nanny through an agency, which can simplify things. Some parents also find childminders more flexible than expected for part-days, though availability can be very local.

It’s definitely a grey area and can feel more complicated than it should, but you’re not alone in finding that middle ground between nanny and babysitter confusing. Hopefully others will share what’s worked for them in similar setups.

Ive actually been hearing a lot of similar questions from parents while doing some parent-led research into childcare — there seem to be so many grey areas like this.

ifyou want the same person and ideally same days /hours it’s employed work

I think you will find it hard to have someone and vary the days as they will be working elsewhere

also very hard to find someone to do 2 half days a week so be better to have one day which will be employed

If you live on a university town I would advertise for an occasional daytime babysitter. Some students might fit it around classes . No idea of what type of arrangement this would be considered.

There used to be a tool on hmrc website to determine whether someone is an employee or not. I would look for that and see if you can clarify the criteria there also.