Accounts, payroll and VAT for domiciliary care agencies, with travel time recorded and paid so the minimum wage holds across every round.
An example round of three visits. Travel from home to the first visit and back from the last does not count for the minimum wage. Travel between visits does.
At £12.71 an hour, the 2 hours 50 minutes that count come to £36.01. Pay of £15 an hour for the visits alone comes to £33.75, which leaves the travel time unpaid and the morning short of the minimum wage.
The VAT exemption covers welfare services supplied by a state-regulated provider, which for home care in England means one registered with CQC. VAT Notice 701/2 says an employment business that supplies staff to a client who is responsible for the care makes a taxable supply, and introducer commissions and arrangement fees are standard-rated. How an agency contracts with its clients and its carers decides which side of that line it is on.
The Home Office revoked more than 470 care sponsor licences between July 2022 and December 2024. A sponsor has to report changes to a sponsored worker within 10 working days and most changes to the organisation within 20, and check the right to work before employment starts. If a licence is revoked, workers who were not involved normally have their permission cut to 60 days, and the business cannot reapply for at least 12 months.
Skills for Care's 2026 report on the adult social care workforce in England puts the vacancy rate in home care at 8.7%, against 3.8% in residential care. Each vacancy covered by agency staff or overtime raises the cost per hour, so we report agency and overtime cost each month beside the hours delivered.
Yes. Regulation 34 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 treats travel for the purposes of work as working time, and GOV.UK gives the example of a care worker driving from one client to another. Travel between the worker's home and the first or last visit does not count.
Yes. Home care supplied by a state-regulated provider stays exempt when a local authority pays for it (VAT Notice 701/2 section 5). An agency that only introduces carers, or that supplies staff to a client who is responsible for the care, makes a taxable supply.
Not from outside the UK. Entry clearance for care workers and senior care workers closed on 22 July 2025. A care worker already in the UK can switch to a new sponsor until 22 July 2028, and the sponsor needs active CQC registration for a job in England.
For irregular-hours and part-year workers, holiday accrues at 12.07% of hours worked, and can be paid as a 12.07% uplift on each payslip, for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024.
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