Our blogs
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Josh Donner
Protecting your hospitality margins amid the 2026 cost crisis With one third of the hospitality sector now operating at a loss, managed outsourced payroll and tronc management isn’t just day-to-day administration; it’s a survival strategy. Running a hospitality business right...
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Paul Chappell
Ask most people to define a car, and they’ll look at you like you’ve lost the plot. Four wheels, an engine, you drive it. Done. Ask HMRC the same question, and you’ll get a very different answer – one that...
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Alison Clynes
April is Stress Awareness Month. It is a moment the HR and wellbeing world tends to mark with statistics about burnout and articles about resilience techniques. All of that is useful. But we wanted to do something a bit different...
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Paul Chappell
The Employment Rights Act 2025 has generated a lot of noise. Day one unfair dismissal rights. Fire and rehire reforms. The Fair Work Agency. All of it warranted, all of it well-documented. But buried in the detail of the Act,...
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Paul Chappell
If your business operates a mobile workforce – care workers visiting clients, agricultural staff on zero-hours contracts, contractors dispatched to different sites each day – a Court of Appeal ruling handed down last year has direct implications for how you...
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Lucy Brewitt
Auto-enrolment doesn’t end once you’ve set up your pension scheme and enrolled your workforce. For most employers, there are ongoing obligations that come around every three years, and missing them can lead to fines from The Pensions Regulator (TPR). Yet...
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Paul Chappell
A new enforcement body launched on 7 April 2026, and it has more power than anything that came before it. The Fair Work Agency has absorbed three existing organisations, inherited a budget and a workforce of 550 inspectors, and been...
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Josh Donner
We’re proud to announce that Ascend Payroll has achieved the CIPP Payroll Assurance Scheme (PAS) accreditation – the gold standard for payroll processes and people in the UK. It’s a significant milestone for our team, and one we didn’t take...
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Paul Chappell
The UK’s statutory sick pay framework has just undergone its most significant overhaul in four decades. The Employment Rights Act 2025 brought a package of changes into effect on 6 April that affect virtually every employer in the country. For...
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Paul Chappell
Every April brings a handful of changes. Usually, they are only tweaks – a wage rate here, a threshold there. You update your software, tick a few boxes, and move on. But 6 April 2026 is different. This isn’t a...
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