Journey
Set up as a domestic employer
Learning path for households employing domestic staff — nannies, carers, cleaners, gardeners, drivers and au pairs. Work out which rules apply to you as a domestic employer, set up PAYE, contracts, pensions, working time and health and safety, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Employing someone in your home — a nanny, au pair, carer, cleaner, housekeeper, gardener or driver — makes you an employer with real legal duties. You must register with HMRC, pay properly, give the right contractual terms, look after your employee's health and safety and meet your pension duties. This applies even though you are a household and not a commercial business. At the same time, some duties that commercial employers carry — employers' liability insurance and the fire safety order — do not apply to you.
This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out which rules apply through to checking you have everything in place. It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
-
Work out which rules apply to you
Start by getting the picture right. A domestic employer carries employment, tax, pension and health-and-safety duties that many people do not realise attach to a household. Equally, some duties that you might expect to apply — employers' liability insurance and the fire safety order — are specifically disapplied for domestic employers. Working this out first tells you what you need to do and what you can set aside. Use the router guide to see the full picture.
Which domestic employer rules apply to you
Work out which duties apply to you as a household employer and which exemptions do not. A reference guide that routes you to the spine and the checklist.
-
Set up your duties as a domestic employer
This is the core of the task. Register as an employer with HMRC and set up PAYE before your employee's first payday. Check their right to work. Give them a written statement of employment particulars on or before day one. Make sure you are paying at least the National Minimum Wage. Take care with the accommodation offset if you provide live-in accommodation, and with the narrow family-worker exemption, which covers only genuine family members. Set up auto-enrolment into a workplace pension if your employee is eligible. Comply with the Working Time Regulations. Ensure the working environment is safe and meet your equality and data protection duties. The spine guide takes you through each duty in order.
Set up and run your duties as a domestic employer
The duties every domestic employer carries — PAYE registration, National Minimum Wage, contracts, auto-enrolment, working time, right to work, health and safety, equality, data protection — and the exemptions.
-
Verify you have covered everything
Once you have set everything up, step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation — PAYE, pay, contracts, pensions, working time, health and safety, equality and data protection — is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before your employee starts, and come back to it when your arrangements change.
Domestic employer: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything — PAYE, National Minimum Wage, contracts, auto-enrolment, working time, health and safety, equality and data protection, plus the exemptions to note.
You will also need the general employer duties
Alongside the path above, you carry general obligations that are not unique to domestic employment but are just as compulsory. As you take on your employee you will also need to:
- register with HMRC as an employer and operate PAYE in real time if earnings reach the threshold
- auto-enrol eligible employees into a workplace pension
- comply with the Working Time Regulations — rest breaks, the 48-hour limit, and 5.6 weeks' paid holiday
- verify your employee's right to work in the UK
These general duties run in parallel with the domestic-specific path rather than after it, so set them up as you bring your employee on board. The spine guide and the compliance checklist bring the core duties together so you can confirm they are covered.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task. Work out which rules apply and which do not. Set up your PAYE, contracts, pension, working time, health and safety, equality and data protection duties. Then verify the lot. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from day one.