Our blogs
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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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Paul Chappell
Holiday pay compliance has been a slow-burning problem for UK employers for well over a decade. Most businesses are broadly aware that the rules changed. That regular overtime needs to be factored into calculations That paying basic salary during annual...
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Paul Chappell
IR35 has never been a settled area of law, and if you have been following tribunal activity over the past two years, you will know that 2024 and 2025 produced some of the most significant case law we have seen...
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Victoria McKay
Payroll is a profession built on precision and deadlines. Every month brings another immovable date, another payroll to deliver, and another group of employees depending on us to get things exactly right. In that kind of environment, how a team...
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Paul Chappell
April 2026 is already shaping up to be one of the busiest months in payroll compliance for a generation. We’ve written about the Employment Rights Act changes, the Fair Work Agency, and R-day. But there’s another change arriving at the...
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Paul Chappell
Tronc schemes are a well-established way for hospitality businesses to distribute tips and service charges to their teams. When they’re set up correctly, they’re efficient, compliant, and genuinely better for employees’ take-home pay. But they do introduce a layer of...
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