How Much Do I Pay My Personal Assistant?
Contents
Where can I get more help or information?
Introduction
If you have decided to become an Individual Employer and employ Personal Assistants (PA), part of your legal responsibilities will be to ensure you pay your employees at least the minimum wage.
National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage
If you are employing your own PA for care and support, either as a self-funder or personal budgets/direct payment recipient, you must ensure that your PA does not get an hourly rate below the national minimum wage (NMW)/National Living Wage (NLW) based on their age. This is one of your legal obligations as an employer towards your employee.
It is essential that you regularly check rates as they are subject to annual increases due to the rising cost of living.
The NMW is for employees of atleast school leaving age. The NLW applies to employees aged 21 and over. The NLW is to increase in April 2025 to £12.21 per hour. The rates change on 1st April every year.
From April 2025, the NMW and NLW (for those aged 21 and over) will be:
- £12.21 per hour for employees aged 21 and over
- £10.00 per hour for employees aged 18 to 20:
- £7.55 per hour for employees aged under 18:
- £7.55 per hour for apprentices
More information about the current Minimum Wage Rates can be found on www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates or www.minimum-wage.co.uk/
See also www.gov.uk/employ-someone.
Living Wage
You can, if you wish, opt to pay the living wage to your PA. This is normally higher than the NMW and the NLW. The real living wage is the UK wage rate based on living costs.
The rates are:
- UK rate: £12.60 per hour
- London rate: £13.85 per hour
For more information see www.livingwage.org.uk/what-real-living-wage
Changing to a direct payment
If you are not on direct payments and you are thinking about changing to a direct payment so you can have more choice and control in order to employ Personal Assistants, you will need to ask your local authority worker (or your health care worker) for a review of your needs or request the social services to give you direct payments rather than having services directly commissioned by your council. Some councils may offer a start-up fund to assist those who wish to employ workers directly to cover recruitment and advertising costs, payroll service and employer’s liability insurance.
Also check with your local authority worker or health care professional whether there is support available for you in order to calculate your hourly rate in accordance with your budget allowance. The direct payments support services can provide such services (cost breakdown for personal care) to you. If you are going to get carers from care agencies or other service providers, the average hourly rate that care agencies charge could range between £15.00 and £25.00. That is because all associated costs (incurred in securing the care provision) are already included in the agency’s rate.
Further information about employment rights and responsibilities can be found at www.acas.org.uk
ACAS helpline on 0300 123 1100 (8am-8pm Monday to Friday and 9am-1pm Saturday).
Where can I get more help or information?
This factsheet is a basic overview of paying a personal assistant. We have other publications concerned with independent living in our shop at https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/shop
You can also place orders by contacting Disability Rights UK.
For further help and information please contact our Advice Line- 0330 995 0404.
You can get more information about where to get personal advice from our Factsheet F15 - Getting advice.
All our factsheets are free to download on our website at disabilityrightsuk.org.
To find out more about an organization in your local area that is run and controlled by disabled people check out Disability Rights UK membership on disabilityrightsuk.org
Organizations run and controlled by disabled people in your area may be able to support you to have more choice and control in your life and support your journey to independent living.