I wondered if other drivers had noticed a trend with many agencies nowadays where they only offer either umbrella schemes or ltd company drivers? Perhaps it’s just me, but by definition being self employed means being able to tell the client that you are just going to have a two hour break now, as being self employed in the real sense, means choosing how you work?
At the moment I am contracted predominantly to one agency, PAYE basis no problems at all, other than I could do with another agency to cover the days there is no work, usually running at one day a week. The latest ones I contacted are located above a well known Staffordshire truckstop on the A5. Spent a hour filling all the online forms in, questions on the highway code and other bumph, followed by a phone call a couple of days later asking me to pop in and see them, as they were really interested in me. At this point I asked the question “Do you offer PAYE?”… silence on the phone, voices in the background… another pause and then “sorry no PAYE - just self employed”.
Not wishing to get into dialogue about driver shortages as that been done to death on here, but it does strike me that trying to alienate drivers even further, by forcing them onto some Mickey Mouse tax avoidance scheme is not good business practice. If you can’t justify all those mock ‘expenses’ with proper receipts, then you just trying to defraud the taxman and that is never going to end well - is it?
It is all about choices and I choose not to get involved with such schemes. Voting with my feet and all that, but it does beg the question to agencies “just how gullible do you think the average trucker actually is?”.
LIBERTY_GUY:
but it does strike me that trying to alienate drivers even further, by forcing them onto some Mickey Mouse tax avoidance scheme is not good business practice.
You think? Their Employers NI bill they no longer have to pay is going to save them hundreds if not thousands a year per driver. Then there’s the hundreds if not thousands they’ll save in holiday pay, they don’t have to bother with all the aggro of employment laws, no need to worry about the Agency Workers Regulations or WTD. It saves them an absolute fortune. If you’ve 100 drivers on self employed getting in 50hrs a week all getting a quid an hour more than PAYE it is not beyond the realms of possibility for you to be saving the thick end of £200,000 a year.
During my time working for agencies I did notice they were becoming more prevalent. I looked into it & decided I didn’t trust them, even rang the tax office to see what the score was, they weren’t interested. In a the end I just asked any agency I was ringing if they did paye, if they said no I told them I wasn’t interested & left it there.
The only way to get the agencies to behave is for good drivers to treat them as you would any poor employer, don’t go there don’t work for them, when all they can get is the scrapings of the barrel they’ll have to up their game or go out of business.
When they haven’t got a driver to their name worth a spit they’ll soon do the other thing.
Juddian:
The only way to get the agencies to behave is for good drivers to treat them as you would any poor employer, don’t go there don’t work for them, when all they can get is the scrapings of the barrel they’ll have to up their game or go out of business.
When they haven’t got a driver to their name worth a spit they’ll soon do the other thing.
They tried this ‘umbrella stunt’ in my other trade with electrical control systems. Claimed the clients now insisted on everyone being through umbrella. Needless to say word soon got around the guys that the clients had said no such thing. Result was one of the biggest suppliers of contract technical staff lost many of the tradespeople off its books, as they migrated to other agencies.
Just don’t know why drivers continue to put up with this endless crap though. Only time I’d class myself as self employed is if I actually owned the bloody truck…
Would have thought you could manage on 4 days work plus your £100 retainer from your specialised, localish, no nights out 30k a year job. Must be a significant suspension of their O license if you’re not back with them yet.
Lucky this spell on agency is just filling in and you’ve got your other trade to fall back on.
Careful you don’t get a stone in your shoe.
Aldi want 5p for a bag these days.
isaac hunt:
Would have thought you could manage on 4 days work plus your £100 retainer from your specialised, localish, no nights out 30k a year job. Must be a significant suspension of their O license if you’re not back with them yet.
Lucky this spell on agency is just filling in and you’ve got your other trade to fall back on.
Absolutely no idea what is happening with their O license, as was only supposed to be a couple of weeks at most to sort it, but that was about six weeks ago now. After such a protracted absence, their customers must surely have walked now? Am just surprised that £100 retainer is still going into my account every week, as they not been in contact at all, no updates no nothing, zilch?
More a case or boredom than money, as already done all those little jobs around the house now.
