r/ContractorUK

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice from people with genuine experience of UK Security Check (SC) clearance or who have worked in security vetting.

Around 10 months ago I was dismissed from a part-time cinema job for gross misconduct. The issue was that I had shared my clock-in login with another employee. On one occasion, while I was running late, he clocked me in without me asking. The company concluded that my hours had been falsified and dismissed me. I accept that sharing my login was a breach of policy and that it ultimately made the situation possible.

I’m due to go through SC soon and intend to be completely honest about the dismissal and answer any questions truthfully. I also realised I’d accidentally omitted this job from my pre-employment screening form, but as soon as I noticed I contacted the screening company to correct it before the screening was complete.

For context:
I’m a UK-born British citizen.
I have a clean criminal record.
This is the only job I’ve ever been dismissed from.
Since then I’ve started another part-time job where I’ve had no issues and have been recognised as a reliable employee.

I’m not looking for reassurance or people to tell me what I want to hear. I’d genuinely like honest opinions from people who understand how SC vetting works.

Would a single gross misconduct dismissal like this be likely to result in an SC refusal? Any professional insight or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

I’m looking to hear from people who have actually been through UK Security Clearance (SC).

During my baseline employment screening (Matrix), I was asked to provide my employment history for the last 5 years. I accidentally left out a part-time retail job that I had for 2 years while I was at university. The screening was completed and approved without any questions.

The reason I’m worried is because I was dismissed from that job for gross misconduct. The employer concluded that my hours had been falsified because my employee PIN had been used to clock in when I wasn’t working.

During the disciplinary hearing, I explained that i don’t have that employee on any social media and had no way of contact to tell him to commit this action, I don’t even know him like that either. He knew my PIN from watching me clock in and out and had clocked me in without my knowledge or consent because I was not there and I don’t know why he did it. On his side of things, he saw that I was late and thought he was being a good friend by clocking me in (that was his explanation). On the record, you can see me clock out and back in an hour after that employee clocked me in because I was confused as to why I was clocked in and through it was a technical error. Despite my explanation, they upheld the dismissal.

I’m now concerned about whether I should include this job on the SC application if it asks for all employment, and whether the difference between what I submitted for Matrix and what I submit for SC could cause problems.
I’m not looking for legal advice. I’m just interested in hearing from people who have actually gone through something similar with SC.

Been offered a contract role, which after 12 months converts to Perm…

Is this a rare setup ? Or rather Common?

It’s for a bank here in London.

Literally had enough of Crunch Accounting. Been with them for five years and they've progressively got worse. Had to file our own VAT returns AND Statement of Accounts to meet various deadlines so we wouldn't get fined.

Anyone else having the same problem? Looking for alternatives where you're able to speak a qualified person from the get go and uses mainstream accountancy software rather than "in-house" software.

Terrible service

Like most I have a Ltd company and only take on Outside IR35 work, other defined works that I've won.

Can anyone recommend tax savvy accountants who work with you to minimise the tax liability versus accountants who say "your deadline is near, send me your receipts"?

Tax savvy / tax efficiency. In my youth I might have accused others as tax avoidance. Whatever it's called, so long as it's legal.

Thanks.

just started my first ever inside IR35 role. I am doing 3 days a week, office hours are 9-5pm. I have a timesheet where I fill out days only; and only have a day rate rather than hours.

The company‘a manager has put together a sheet of responsibilities and it says that I should be supporting out of hour work as needed (so doing 1-2 hours of work on days I am not contracted for or on weekends).

Would I be right to push back against this and say it’s not possible? As I am contracted only for certain days, and I wouldn’t have a way to charge overtime or outside hours, I only have the ability to charge per day.

The umbrella company signed the contract on my behalf with the recruiting agency, and hours or set days are not listed on the schedule agreement, it only has the day rate and then the notice period.

TL;DR - Should a CV really be no more than 2 pages? What works best for you and is it different for leadership Vs hands on technical roles.

Early on in your career you don't have much content to place in a CV, but once you're 20+ years in, particularly in IT you have so many roles, frameworks, technologies etc under your belt. You then have a challenge where some job roles (or recruiters) are very myopic in what they ask for, sometimes assuming you're not a match because your profile doesn't mention a very specific variant of a skillset. As someone who prefers contracting outside IR35 Is the advice to Taylor each CV for the roles you apply for so that you can keep your CV within the recommended 2 page limit, or do you just keep a generic that perhaps flows over 4 or more pages (keeping early career compressed and more recent verbose)?

In the last couple of years I've had a number of lucrative short 3 month contracts all with their own stacks, own domains and very different kinds of deliverables. Some roles are more about strategy and leadership influence, and other roles are more pure engineering (I really enjoy both).

I've recently noticed when applying for roles via linkedin that the AI insight/advisor will inform me of having missing skills for a particular role but when I click to see more info the "missing" skills are not missing, I just don't think anybody wants 15 page CV.

On the other side of hiring, in my last full time role I had to review CVs and interview candidates for my team and I'm pretty sure most of the CVs I read were over 2 pages. Particularly when I've wanted to hire for intermediate or senior technical roles I always feel like 2 page CV didn't give me enough context.

What are your best tips for improving the hit rate on your CV in the UK context as an IT contractor with 20+ years of experience?

Hi there,

I want to get into contracting but am not sure where to find them. I understand you can get them through recruiters reaching out to you on linkedin but not aware of anywhere else. Does anyone here know of anything? Particularly for machine learning roles.

Thanks

Hello fellow contractors

I’m 4 weeks into a £475 outside role, 6 month contract. Nice culture, impactful scope and work is semi engaging and it seems there would be room for extension or perm later. But not set on the industry niche as a whole.

Been offered a £550 a day outside role for 3-6 months. Slightly more wide potential in this industry. But it’s more a single project deliverable, so less likelihood of extension etc. Work might be abit more repetitive but of course this is all speculation.

I’m not that concerned about the contract length as I’m hoping to go Perm after somewhere or another. But essentially is it worth burning a bridge and leaving early for the extra cash?

Also with 2 weeks notice, do they usually make you work this from experience? Or am I better off assuming not and letting them know right at the end to avoid downtime. Cheers.

Interviewing for a role atm which will be 2 hours of interview (potentially 3 hours in a 3rd stage) followed by a technical test. All this for average day rate Analyst role which is only 6 months long?

Is this overkill??

Why are recruiters hiring contractors like they hire perms? Bit confused by this.

Hey all, been working on a contract for just over a year (I had been with the same end client for 5 years after a 3 year break elsewhere), and I have a 4 week notice period (me), 2 week (them) split.

I requested to shave one day off the notice period, as my next gig require the first day to be an in office day for IT setup, and their in-office day falls on the last day of my notice.

My immediate agency have been trying to argue this for me, but the big prime are saying no, that they need a 3 day handover, not 2 day. This basically means I have a week unpaid.

Also just found out, the person replacing me is the person I took over from a year ago, and they are more than capable in the role.

Anyone experienced this and got any advice?

EDIT
Just want to add, this isn't just about having to take a week unpaid, my issue is that personally a lot has come up recently, and I also have a holiday booked in August, and then I have been called up for 2 weeks Jury duty in September, so it's just a combination of all those things.

Hi, all

It's my first outside contract. I have some side income that eating into my 12k take home tax free allowance. And my accountant suggested paying myself 500 as salary each month to avoid running a payroll and paying into NI.

I am not worried about the amount of money.

But is it true that I dont need a payroll. Cause currently I only mark the transaction as salary when paying myself. And my accountant says it is okay, because the amount is small enough, and "people dont run a payroll for their dog walkers".

And is it true that if I get 5k salary per year, I dont need to pay into NI at all?

Started a contract in May as they were after AWS Skills for a modernisation project. The whole company is legacy and going through migrations for a number of products.

My team has no Architect and legacy devs. The whole infrastructure is a complete mess and won’t work when ready to migrate customers - which I’ve explained 5 times already.

We have a bi-weekly meeting to discuss topics but the perms take up 90% of the meeting complaining about trivial shite.

I’m used to working in highly efficient tech companies where decisions are made in less than 2 minutes. Whereas here they can discuss an EC2 instance size for an hour.

It’s so aggravating and when I suggest new things or best practices it’s a whole world of more discussions and push backs.

I’m actually concerned the project will be thrown if they don’t get things right fast.

How do you deal with this? This isn’t normal for me.

My new contract has the option on inside or outside IR35

I’ve pushed for outside as I assumed it gave me a better tax advantage, however using a couple of on line calculatiors and Claude AI it looks like not much difference between inside/outside.

Am I missing something major?

Rate would be around £1000 per day for 18 months for info

I'm in discussions with a Canadian client about potentially one to two months' work for them. I would be primarily based in the UK but would have one week on-site in Montreal and three days at an office down in Florida. The rest of the time would be spent working from the UK.

Anyone have any experience of anything I should be aware of? I've seen something about regulation 105 regarding tax that might be deducted for the time that I'm on-site in Montreal, and that I can get a regulation 105 waiver form. It looks like I need a Canadian tax number for that, which seems complex given that this could start in the middle of next week. I think I can potentially recover that via an SA106 foreign tax credit form, but is there anything else that I should be aware of?

Looking for an accountant experienced with contractors, pensions, VAT and digital income

I am now looking to build additional passive or semi-passive income streams through social media content and paid training courses. My plan is to set up a separate limited company for this new business activity.

The company’s income would mainly come from course sales, YouTube/social-media-related income, sponsorships and similar digital products. I do not expect to take a salary from the new company; I would only take dividends when appropriate and leave some profit in the business for growth.

I am looking for recommendations for an accountant or accountancy package that can properly support:

• A new limited company alongside my existing contracting income
• Corporation tax, VAT registration and VAT returns
• Dividend planning
• Digital product, training-course and social media income
• Business expenses and bookkeeping software
• tax-planning considerations, without crossing into financial advice

Ideally, I would like an accountant who understands UK contractors and online training/content businesses, rather than a basic low-cost service that only files annual accounts.

Has anyone used an accountant or package they would genuinely recommend?

Hi fellow contract Redditors,

For the first time, I'm facing a situation where I want to break the contract early due to a change in my manager's attitude and not sure how to manage this given there is no break-out clause in the contract. Any advice?

Context: I started a contract 4 months ago (set-up via my LTD), initially for 2 months and then extended to another 6 months. The contract had no clause stating under what terms I can break the contract but the employer has clauses for that (i.e., they can break the contract but I can't break it). In recent weeks, my direct manager has suddenly become almost abusive as his stress levels are increasing (before he was a bit erratic but manageable; now he's crossed a line). Not willing to accept that, I'm considering breaking the contract but given that I have no clause on the terms in which I can do that, I'm unsure how to manage this.

Has any of you been in a similar situation? How would you approach this?

Thank you

LE: Thank you for all the answers. I really appreciate that you took the time for that. To add add some further information (whilst keeping anonymity):

• Contract is signed with an EU entity (so I'm assuming there should be no IR35 debate) and I work mostly with a UK team but also sometimes travel to the EU
• the deliverable is "advisory services" for a certain period of time
• I'm understand that it's unlikely to have to pay compensation to the employer but what concerns me is that I won't get paid on my outstanding invoices (60 day payment period) and it would be too expensive to go through the (foreign) court; ultimately, the said manager needs to approve my invoices and he can choose to be petty

When you are looking at a new statement of work or interviewing with an end client, what is the single biggest indicator that tells you this is going to be a smooth, professional, and genuinely outside IR35 engagement?

Recent post stating contracting market is picking up and more Outside roles are showing up. Just wanted to understand other contractors positions and how they are finding the current market.

For contractors who are still in contract:

Inside/Outside

Contract Duration - how long you have been with current client, how long is left on current contract and if you see scope for extension

Day rate

Role/Sector you work in

For contractors who are out of contract:

How long have you been out of contract?

Have you had many interviews/chats with recruiters?

What are you doing with your free time? I.e learning new skills, enjoying time off, side projects etc

I recently left my full time employment to work on a few of my own projects and freelance. I started a limited company this year in April with the plan of paying myself the £12,570 a year from my freelance earning so I cover my NI contributions with no income tax.

Using Tide bank and their payroll feature I was simply going to pay myself the £1,047 per month seeing as I incorporated in April, nice and simple . However I didn’t expect it to take 2-3 months to get all the paperwork sent from hmrc to get payroll set up!

Now that my directors salary is likely to not start until end of July, do I just adjust the monthly payroll payments from the start (so £1,396 pm) or £1,047pm and do a lump sum of the rest on the last payroll before end of tax year? Maybe either is fine?

I know I could just hire an accountant but for the first year I thought I could handle everything myself and get an idea of how it all works. It can’t be that difficult right 🥲Thanks for any tips.