DPSS Payroll service

DPSS Payroll is a free service available to you if you choose to meet care needs by directly employing a personal assistant carer. DPSS Payroll provides full PAYE support for employers of 1 or more personal assistant carers.

Setting up PAYE

Once you have recruited a personal assistant carer, you will be contacted by the DPSS team by post or by email requesting that you complete a new employer/employee form. From you, the employer, we will need information such as:

Your name
Your address
Your National Insurance number
The planned start date of your employee and their rate of pay

And we will need to know the employee's:

Full name
Date of birth
National Insurance number
Address
Bank details

As you will be a new employer, we will send a request to HMRC to become your agent. Once we have done this, you will receive a letter from HMRC containing details of our request and an authorisation code to pass onto us.

When you receive this letter, you will need to forward this to us as soon as possible either:

By email, to DPSSPayroll@norfolk.gov.uk
By post, to Direct Payment Support Services, Finance Exchequer Services, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich, NR1 2UE

This letter will need to be sent to us within seven working days, as we need to use the codes contained within that letter to complete the set up process.

Pension Registration

We will complete and update your Pensions Regulator Declarations of Compliance and Re-enrolments. We will write to you with information to pass to your personal assistant carer regarding workplace pensions, and update you when they have been assessed for auto-enrolment. We will then set up a National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) pension scheme and pay over contributions on your behalf. For more information, visit the Nest Pensions website.

As the employer, you must comply with pension auto-enrolment responsibilities. Failure to do so could lead to financial penalties, which can start at £50 per day for people with up to four employees.

Timesheets

You need to record and submit the hours your personal assistant carer has worked on a monthly basis to dpsspayroll@norfolk.gov.uk. The timesheet needs to be signed by the service user or nominee, and the employee. It is also important that you put the hours worked per week as we need this information to calculate holiday allowance.

We will send you two PA Payslips (one to pass to your employee, and one for you to keep as the employer), as well as a payroll cover letter and a timesheet template.

Timesheet deadlines

July 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 31 July
Pay date for your personal assistant: 9 August

August 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 30 August
Pay date for your personal assistant: 10 September

September 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 1 October
Pay date for your personal assistant: 10 October

October 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 30 October
Pay date for your personal assistant: 8 November

November 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 29 November
Pay date for your personal assistant: 10 December

December 2024

Deadline for timesheet to be sent in: 19 December
Pay date for your personal assistant: 10 January 2025

Sickness

We may need to send you the following letters to pass onto your employee

Statutory Sick Pay (SSP1) Letter
Statutory Sick (SSP1) form completed with the relevant details

It can then be used to support the employee's claim for social security benefits, such as Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

Maternity

When calculating Maternity, dependent on the situation we may need to send you letters to pass to your employee:

Entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay
or Maternity Letter - Not Entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay. We will also include a completed SMP1 form which will show the details
or Breakdown Letter Statutory Maternity Pay if requested

Employee Holiday

Please record any holiday taken, we are able to send you a holiday calculation so you can share this with your employee to advise them of how much holiday leave they have left. We can send the holiday information by email or if required by post.

If you have any questions or queries regarding our service, call 01603 223392 (Option 3) or email DPSSpayrollservice@norfolk.gov.uk.