Vince Ashall MSc FCIPP, industry luminary, payroll veteran and tutor, and retiree , provides a brief history of his career in payroll, and comments on developments and the future So long, farewell
My career, in brief As was commonplace ‘back in the day’, I got into payroll completely by accident. I had attended for interview for an accounts office position at my local hospital, didn’t get it, but was offered a similar position in the salaries and wages department – as payroll offices were then known. My commencement in payroll in the National Health Service (NHS) coincided with a review of the function resulting in a career structure being set up. I progressed though the grades up to executive officer II level before being appointed deputy payroll manager and pensions officer. This progression was with various health authorities in the North West, thus giving me experience of how different payroll departments performed similar tasks. I then moved from the ‘frontline’ to working behind the scenes. The NHS had its own bespoke payroll system – the Standard Payroll System (or SPS, as we called it). Here I was responsible for ensuring the payroll system was updated with the relevant tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) rates, and the payscale values used in the NHS. In or around 1994, following one of the incessant reviews that are undertaken within the NHS, it was decided that IT – I was based within the North Western Regional Health Authority’s computer centre – wasn’t core NHS business. As a consequence, I was privatised under ‘TUPE’ arrangements along with the other staff. Several further TUPE transfers occurred thereafter. The joke in the office being that as well as keeping our terms and conditions, we kept the same desk and chairs. Following the demise of the SPS around 2008, when the NHS moved to a fully integrated HR and payroll system using
Oracle software, I combined working part- time processing payrolls for companies, with self-employment undertaking payroll training and updating payroll manuals for various organisations. Significant changes The significant changes during my career in payroll management are all related to statutory changes, as follows: ● introduction of statutory payments, their associated reclaims and how they fit in with occupational schemes; the latest being statutory parental bereavement leave and pay. Statutory sick pay (SSP) has lost none of its complexity and, at the risk of sounding like Uncle Albert from Only fools and horses , I remember when there were three levels of SSP depending on the employee’s average weekly earnings in the previous eight weeks ● auto-enrolment ● real time information (RTI) – need I say more?! Achievements My best achievements in payroll are: ● obtaining the CIPP’s Master’s degree and becoming a Fellow of the CIPP, and ● overseeing the implementation in the SPS of the NHS’s new pay and grading structure, ‘Agenda for change’.
senior payroll personnel to concentrate more on the strategic elements and helping organisations improve the ‘bottom line’. Growth in the take-up of ‘pay on demand, as per the roundtable article in the September issue of Professional . I can’t help but wonder if HMRC will try and get in on the act and want their share ‘on demand’ – or more on demand than they have at present. I predict further changes to RTI. When first mooted, the proposal was that pay files would be submitted to HMRC for the calculation of tax and NICs. With HMRC’s move to all things digital and its ‘Making tax digital’ agenda, will this raise its head again? In my view, not until the thorny problem of attachment of earnings orders has been dealt with. The Covid-19 crisis has prompted another look at NICs and whether they should be subsumed into tax. A full subsumption is still a long way off owing to the link with state benefits even though the ‘contribution principle’ has been somewhat eroded with the introduction of the flat rate state pension and the NICs nil rate band for earnings between the lower earnings level and the primary/secondary earnings thresholds. However, the introduction of the apprenticeship levy possibly points the way to the replacement of the secondary (employer) NICs with a payroll tax since employer’s NICs confer no eligibility to benefits on employees. The introduction of the various payroll qualifications, together with the payroll apprenticeship, should all go to make payroll a career of choice rather than a career one falls into by accident. And, finally… I take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped me along the way in my payroll career. In particular (but not limited to), those stalwarts of the payroll profession, Kate Upcraft and the recently retired Ken Gurr. n
Regrets Not one! I have no hesitation in
recommending a career in payroll. Although there is a regularity to the payroll process, no two pay periods are exactly the same; and there is always some bright spark in government sticking their oar in. The future I expect to see more automation of the transactional aspects of payroll, leaving
...I have no hesitation in recommending a career in payroll.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | December 2020 - January 2021 | Issue 66 42
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