What Is PAYE? 2026: How Pay As You Earn Works Explained
Pay As You Earn (PAYE) is HMRC’s statutory system for collecting Income Tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) from employment income through payroll. For employers, PAYE is not optional administration. It is a legal obligation that sits at the centre of payroll governance, HR risk management and financial compliance under UK employment law. When PAYE […]
Payment in Lieu of Notice 2026 | Meaning & When It’s Used
Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON) is an operationally attractive option for employers because it allows an exit to be executed quickly. It is also a legally sensitive decision, because PILON interacts with contract rights, tax treatment and litigation risk. Used correctly, it supports clean exits and risk control. Used casually, it can trigger avoidable […]
Automatically Unfair Dismissal 2026 Explained | Meaning & Examples
British employment law draws a sharp distinction between ordinary unfair dismissal and dismissals that Parliament has treated as inherently unacceptable. Automatically unfair dismissal sits in the second category. It is not about whether the employer followed a textbook process or acted with good intentions. It is about whether the reason for dismissal falls within a […]
Statutory Maternity Pay UK 2026: Eligibility, Rates & How It Works
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) is one of the most commonly searched employment law topics in the UK. For employees, it determines whether they will receive income during maternity leave and how much they can expect to be paid. For employers, it creates a statutory financial obligation, payroll liability and a series of compliance risks that […]
Bradford Factor Explained | Meaning, Formula & Examples
The Bradford Factor is widely used in UK workplaces because it converts sickness absence into a single number that feels objective, comparable and easy to manage. For HR teams and business owners, that simplicity is appealing. It supports workforce planning, highlights patterns of frequent short-term absence and can help prompt earlier conversations about support and […]
UK Minimum Wage 2026: Current Rates & Employer Duties
Section A: Overview of Minimum Wage 2026 By law, employers are required to meet specific obligations in relation to workers’ pay under the National Minimum Wage provisions. 1. What is the National Minimum Wage? The UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) is the legally mandated hourly wage that employers should pay their […]
SSP Rate 2026: Guide for Employers
Section A: SSP Rate in 2026 Statutory Sick Pay is the legal baseline for sick pay in the UK, but for employers it is rarely just a payroll figure. SSP sits at the point where pay, absence management and legal risk meet. Errors tend to surface not because the rules are unknown, but […]
UK Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) 2026: Eligibility, Amount & Rules
Section A: What is Statutory Sick Pay? Statutory Sick Pay is the legal minimum sick pay that UK employers are required to provide when an employee is unable to work due to illness. It operates as a statutory baseline rather than a discretionary benefit and applies regardless of sector or workforce size. For […]
Term-Time Only Contracts UK 2026: Holiday Pay Rules
Term-time only contracts sit in one of the most litigated corners of UK holiday pay. The risk is rarely about whether someone is “entitled” to paid leave (they are, if they are a worker). The risk is whether the employer has correctly identified (1) what type of worker they are dealing with and (2) which […]
Use-It-or-Lose-It Holiday Policy UK 2026: Rules & Rights
Employers frequently face uncertainty over how to manage unused annual leave, particularly where employees reach the end of the holiday year with untaken entitlement. From a commercial perspective, unused holiday represents cost, disruption and operational risk. From a legal perspective, it represents one of the most common sources of non-compliance under the Working Time Regulations […]