Forming a Gardening Team

Hello.Only this year have I been working as a self-employed Gardener. This has been on my own with a Van & a reasonable range of equipment & I have been concentrating solely on soft landscaping involving grass cutting,weeding,ground clearance,pruning etc.I wish to go on concentrating solely on soft landscaping.I obtained in 2009/2010 an HNC in Horticulture from a College in Scotland.

I would greatly welcome as much in the way of advice & comments please on the aspect of finding & utilising from between most likely one to three workers so that there could be two teams of workers,(I would be part of one of the teams),working on two different garden jobs ,(sourced by myself), on any one day, come the start of next season.If this worked, then potentially a third team or maybe a larger second team could operate,utilising more personnel in the future, but best to walk before running!!

The workers would be self employed so I understand there would be no NI or tax matters for me to get involved in. I would ,of course, be keeping records of the payments made to the workers for my own tax purposes ,but other than that ,what would be the main points to bear in mind ?Among other matters possibly, would the workers simply be liable for their own insurances and my own insurance arrangements be left unaltered?

Two potential problems might be (1)Availability of personnel for the next job I would be quoting for,(they might have gone off to work for someone else or simply refuse the extra work for that next job) and (2)The risk they might try to obtain the client as their own for future jobs!

Simply,(I hope!),I would be paid by the client direct,(the amount not being divulged to my co-workers),and I would pay my co-workers the agreed hourly rate or amount worked out with them,depending on the type of costing I had agreed with the client.The balance remaining would be mine.

Looking forward to your kind replies.

Regards, Harvey Harris

You wont get any loyalty from using self employed guys. If you are concered about tax liability take on part time staff on 16 hours a week contracts. So, if you need three men working full time hours, employ 6 men part time. I employ 1 full time and 2 part time staff with the part time staff being used flexiabily through the working week. It works well for me, wont suit every business but worth looking at. Plus self emyed guys wont work for less than £15 per hour which wont be a viable pay rate to you. Remember the tax threshold is £7400 a year before they pay tax and theres plenty of people willing to work part time, especially if theyve got a family coz they will qualify for working tax credits that makes up their wages.

"Plus it doesn't matter if we all know plants are better value. I'd make the point of this to the customer but if they want trough grown at the extra cost that's their choice I'd just do it"

"I've done 5ft Thorne troughs. Very easy to plant just got a mini digger dug the trench then drop them in couldn't be easier however £250 per m does seem expensive. "

Thought I'd sign up to this forum. And I hope I'm allowed to post stuff for sale on here as this will be a one off? I have for sale a tiny pro robot, it's not the new edition but it's the bigger one of the two. If anyone is interested then please…

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Brian www.mibservices.co.uk November 13, 2011 at 6:13pm

You wont get any loyalty from using self employed guys. If you are concered about tax liability take on part time staff on 16 hours a week contracts. So, if you need three men working full time hours, employ 6 men part time. I employ 1 full time and 2 part time staff with the part time staff being used flexiabily through the working week. It works well for me, wont suit every business but worth looking at. Plus self emyed guys wont work for less than £15 per hour which wont be a viable pay rate to you. Remember the tax threshold is £7400 a year before they pay tax and theres plenty of people willing to work part time, especially if theyve got a family coz they will qualify for working tax credits that makes up their wages.