Employers Liability for Photographers

Employers Liability

Do you employ anyone? If you think you don't then read on and ask yourself again at the end.

Being a photographer you don't need this do you!!!!

Think again. See Employers Liability isn't just about people you employ and pay say on a PAYE basis. Its a general misconception that the person you have working with/for you must be employed "on the books" so to speak.

This may get slightly heavy but I will keep it as brief and as interesting and relevant as possible. Employers Liability Insurance is a statutory requirement if you employ someone.

So who/what is an employee?

Think of these people not as employees where you pay them but more of who does as they are told by you. Lets refer to this as a master and servant, you're the master and the person assisting or doing work for you is the servant! This could be...

Full Time Employee, Part Time Employee, Training Scheme(Apprentice, Work Experience) Casual Worker, Voluntary Worker, Agency Worker etc.

Agency Workers can be a little different and you should check with the agency used or your contract with them to establish who will be responsible for them as an Employee.

Consider this little scenario, you have been contracted to shoot a number of cars for a magazine, this will entail quite a number of lights above and around the cars but you don't have the time to erect these yourself, you know of someone who can do this for you ahead of the shoot, you know they carry out this type of work often so you decide to employee him for one day and pay him on an hourly rate, you don't deduct any tax from him as this is dealt with by him. Is this person an employee? Yes but slightly different to your general PAYE where you would normally deduct tax and NI at source. This person is providing you with his labour only and you should be notifying your insurer about these types of people.

Just to take this one step further, lets assume the same scenario is about to take place however this time you decided that you would leave the job to a professional company who would supply all of the materials, lighting, labour etc, they have given you a price for the work an you have accepted their charge, at the end of the job they invoice you for the work carried out. Is this still a master and servant relationship? All you have done is provide them with details of the work to be done and they have completed this with little or no involvement from you. They have their own insurance, provide any materials or equipment and they pay their employees directly.

You may think the above sounds a little extreme as far as a photographer is concerned and it may not apply to you... the point is you need to understand whether you employ anyone

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