Our blogs
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Paul Chappell
The 2026 umbrella crackdown If your business relies on agency workers or contractors, you might assume that how they get paid is entirely the responsibility of the recruitment agency or their chosen umbrella company. For years, many businesses have taken...
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Paul Chappell
Continuity of service is one of those concepts that sits quietly in the background of employment law until the moment it matters enormously. It can be the difference between an employee having real protection against dismissal and having almost none....
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Lucy Brewitt
There is a change coming to pension salary sacrifice that does not get nearly enough attention, and April 2029 has a habit of feeling a long way off right up until it is not. From 6 April 2029, National Insurance...
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Paul Chappell
As an employer, you want to look after your team’s health and wellbeing. Offering to cover the cost of routine healthcare like eye tests and seasonal flu vaccinations is a brilliant way to show you care. But historically, the tax...
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Alison Clynes
Why outsourcing makes financial sense When you receive a quote for managed payroll, it is easy to view it as a brand-new business expense. This usually happens because you are comparing it against a falsely low internal cost base. Many...
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Paul Chappell
From 6 April 2027, payrolling benefits in kind will stop being a choice and become the default for most employers. If you’ve relied on the P11D process for years, the bigger question isn’t why this is happening. It’s how the...
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Paul Chappell
Salary sacrifice schemes look simple on paper. Reduce the salary, provide the benefit, process the payroll on the lower figure. What is there to get wrong? Quite a lot, as it turns out. After years of working with businesses across...
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Josh Donner
We’re delighted to welcome Grant Water to the team as Payroll Professional.. Grant brings a broad base of payroll and tronc experience to Ascend, having worked across corporate payroll and specialist tipping schemes for clients spanning healthcare, hospitality and beyond....
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Stewart Waddell
We’re delighted to welcome George Serls to the team as our Public Sector Pension Specialist. George brings a career’s worth of payroll and pensions expertise to Ascend, with particular depth in the education sector, where pension schemes like Teachers’ Pensions...
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LIam Ridgill
On 23 June 2026, a new legal duty landed on every organisation in the UK that handles personal data. If you employ people, that means you. The rule itself is short. You have to give people a clear way to...
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