What is in the hourly rate you pay a private carer?

A carer on PrimeCarers sets their own hourly rate and puts it on their profile. Our commission sits inside that figure rather than being added to it, so the number you read before you speak to anyone is the number on the invoice afterwards. There is no deposit and no joining fee. The fuller list of what the rate covers is on the pricing page, which sets out the whole arrangement in one place.

The commission is what pays for the parts of the arrangement that are ours rather than the carer's: the checks that are done before a carer appears in search, the insurance that covers a carer while they work where they do not hold their own, the written contract between you and the carer, taking the payment after each visit, and a support team you can ring. Those are the things listed on the pricing page, and the VAT due on the commission comes out of the commission.

The comparison in the diagram is the reason the two figures differ so much. A care agency employs its care workers, so its price has to cover their pay for travel between calls and for waiting time, holiday and sick pay, rotas and offices, and the cost of being a regulated employer. The Homecare Association, the trade body for home care providers, publishes a minimum price each year built from those same components. None of that is waste, and it is a different way of buying the same hour.

VAT is a tax on most goods and services, charged at a standard rate of 20 per cent, with reduced and zero rates on some things. A business has to register for VAT once its taxable turnover over the last twelve months passes the registration threshold, which is £90,000 on gov.uk. Below that figure, registering is a choice rather than a requirement.

Two things follow from this for your bill. Carers do not charge VAT on their care, so nothing is added to the carer's share. And the VAT owed on our commission is paid out of that commission rather than passed on to you, so nothing is added to our share either. The figure on the profile is the figure you pay, which also makes comparing carers straightforward: you are always looking at like for like.

The condition on the first three rows is the one to hold on to. The contract says that travel expenses and travel-related charges are not included unless you and the carer expressly agree them in advance, with the rate and the circumstances recorded in writing, and that other out-of-pocket costs are repaid where the carer can show receipts. So it is worth settling mileage at the start if a carer will be driving your relative to appointments, rather than leaving it until the first one.

If you want more support than the introduction itself, our managed service explains what the two optional tiers add. Neither is required, and the rates quoted throughout this page are without them. Paying for care at home and managing expenses goes further into how expenses and receipts work week to week, and the costs people forget covers what sits outside a carer's rate altogether, such as equipment and the extra heating a house needs when somebody is in it all day.

The third column carries more than its hourly figure suggests. If you pay a carer or personal assistant directly, gov.uk treats you as their employer, even where the money comes from a council direct payment or the NHS. That means setting up and running payroll, deducting income tax and National Insurance, paying statutory sick and maternity pay, taking out employers' liability insurance, giving a contract and payslips, and checking the person can work in the UK. You also cannot ask an employee to call themselves self-employed instead. The hourly figure looks lower because it is only part of the cost.

On PrimeCarers the carer is self-employed, which the contract states plainly: they are responsible for their own income tax and National Insurance, and nothing in the arrangement makes them your employee. PrimeCarers introduces you and handles the payment, and the care itself is agreed between you and the carer. You can read the whole of it in the client contract before you book anything.

Hours are not the only way to buy care at home. Past about 35 hours a week, the cost of live-in care starts to come in below the same hours bought as visits, and the cost of care by type sets the four arrangements next to each other.

Reading the bookings before the invoice goes out is worth doing every week, because the invoice is only ever as accurate as what was entered. Deposits, cancellation and notice works through the cancellation and notice rules in more detail, including what happens when a hospital admission takes a week of visits out at no notice.

If the rate itself is the problem rather than the invoice, the answer is usually the shape of the week rather than the price of an hour. Ten ways to bring the cost of care down covers the practical changes, and if your relative has savings below the upper capital limit in England, or a health need rather than a care need, local authority funding is worth asking about at the same time. According to the NHS, a care needs assessment is free and anyone can ask for one, whatever their savings.