01 · The bottom line

You are better off. That part was never in doubt. But £13 self-employed is not £13. It is worth about £11.75 an hour employed, for two reasons that have nothing to do with anyone being unfair to you.

One: no paid holiday. Employed, you get 5.6 weeks a year paid. That is 28 days where money lands and you are on a beach. Self-employed, a day off is a day with no money. Your 52 weeks of pay becomes about 46.4.

Two: you pay your own tax. Nothing is deducted at source. Everything that hits your bank looks like yours, and roughly 26p in every pound above £12,570 is not.

02 · Run your own numbers

The routes, from The Birches, Cheadle: Padel500 at Atlantic Place, Whieldon Road, ST4 4HP is 10.9 miles each way on the A521 and A50, about 44 minutes round trip off peak. Your Padel at Uttoxeter is 9.7 miles on the A522, about 38 minutes round trip. So the new one is slightly further, and you would be doing it five days a week instead of three.

Some of the rest we are guessing at until you ask them. Put the real figures in.

Rates used: personal allowance £12,570, basic rate 20%, Class 4 NI 6% between £12,570 and £50,270, employee NI 8%, employer NI 15%. Class 2 NI was abolished in April 2024. Petrol assumed at 4.546 litres per gallon.

03 · Three corrections to what I told you first

04 · Are you actually self-employed?

Calling you self-employed does not make you self-employed. HMRC and an employment tribunal look at what actually happens, not what the paperwork says.

No single thing settles it, and be careful here, because genuine contractors can agree fixed hours. It is the whole picture that counts. Four things decide it:

• Control. Who decides what you do, when, where and how.
• Substitution. Whether you can send someone competent in your place.
• Mutuality of obligation. Whether they must offer work and you must accept it.
• Financial risk. Whether you can actually lose money on the deal.

Forty hours a week, their venue, their members, their booking system, their rota, no right of substitution, and you cannot lose money. Add that up and it looks a lot like employment wearing a hat. If so you may be a worker in law whatever the contract says, and a worker is owed the minimum wage and 5.6 weeks of paid holiday anyway.

I am not telling you to open with this. It is not a nice first conversation and you want the job. But know it is there, because it is why they want the arrangement, and it is why you have room to ask for more money.

05 · The write-offs are mostly not real

Whatever the GM says, whatever his accountant says. If it goes on your return, it is your return, your name and your penalty. Not theirs.

Cannot claim

• Petrol to and from work. Travel from home to a regular workplace is ordinary commuting. Everybody drives to work. Not deductible, ever.
• Food at your normal workplace. You would have eaten anyway. Only genuinely itinerant work or a real trip away from base qualifies.
• Padel kit, trainers, shorts, tracksuit. Clothing you could wear outside work fails, even if you only ever wear it at work. There is case law on exactly this.
• Your phone contract in full. Business proportion only, and you would need to be able to show how you worked it out.

Can claim

• 45p a mile for driving between venues during a working day, or to a one-off site that is not your normal base. Not the commute.
• Branded uniform or genuine protective gear that you could not wear otherwise.
• Coaching qualifications, DBS, first aid, insurance tied to the work.
• Accountant's fee for preparing the accounts.

06 · The bit that catches people out

Not the amount of tax. The timing.

Start in autumn 2026 and you are in the 2026/27 tax year, which ends 5 April 2027. That return is not due until 31 January 2028. You will have been working for about sixteen months before HMRC asks you for anything. That is a long time to get used to money being yours when it is not.

Then, in the first year you go over roughly £1,000 of tax, the bill arrives with a payment on account stapled to it: the year you owe, plus half of the next year up front. On a full year at these numbers that is about £3,005 plus £1,503 in one hit, with another £1,503 the following July.

I told you a tax return is a piece of piss, and for your situation it genuinely is. One client, one income stream, almost no real expenses. It is an hour with a spreadsheet. The form is easy. The discipline is the hard part, and they are not the same thing. Nobody your age comes unstuck on the paperwork. They come unstuck having spent the 26% they were meant to be putting aside.

Deadlines that carry automatic fines

• Register as self-employed by 5 October 2027 (the 5 October after the end of the tax year you started in). Takes ten minutes online. You get a UTR number in the post.
• File by 31 January 2028. One day late is £100 whether you owe tax or not. Then £10 a day after three months, capped at £900, then more.
• Pay by 31 January 2028. Interest runs at base rate plus 4% from day one, then 5% of the tax owed at six months, and another 5% at twelve.
• Keep filing every year until you tell HMRC you have stopped trading. Including years you earn nothing from it. People forget this and collect £100 fines for a business they closed.
• Keep your records for five years past the January deadline.
• Making Tax Digital catches you in April 2028 at the £20,000 threshold. That is quarterly submissions, so five filings a year instead of one.

One thing you do not need to worry about: Class 2 NI was abolished in April 2024. Earn over £12,570 and you get your qualifying year towards the State Pension automatically. Nothing to pay, nothing to do.

07 · What to say to them

Not a fight. A straight, informed ask. Send it, or say it, in roughly these words.

Happy to work self-employed, no problem with that. Running the numbers though, £13 self-employed works out around £11.75 an hour employed once holiday pay and my own National Insurance come out of it. So either £15 an hour self-employed, or £13 on PAYE. Both work for me.

You have room because hiring you self-employed saves them, on every pound they pay you:

• 15% employer National Insurance
• 12.07% holiday pay
• Statutory sick pay
• Notice periods, redundancy, and unfair dismissal rights

Call it 20 to 25% cheaper for them. Asking for a slice of that back is not cheeky, it is the normal trade.

08 · Before you say yes

• Ring the insurer. Social, domestic and pleasure does not cover commuting. Driving to work uninsured is an IN10 conviction, six points, and a wrecked premium for years. Sort it before day one, not after.
• Ask what the shift pattern actually is. Evenings and weekends is a different job to nine to five, and the A50 at Fenton is a car park between eight and nine and again at five. That could be an hour a day on top.
• Ask how hours are guaranteed. Self-employed with no minimum means a quiet January is your problem, not theirs. Get a floor in writing.
• Ask when you get paid. Weekly, monthly, on invoice, how many days.
• Ask whether their public liability policy covers you. If you are coaching as a self-employed contractor rather than an employee, it may well not, and your own cover is £100 to £200 a year. Get the answer in writing.
• Ask about DBS. If there are any under-18s in the sessions you will need one. Ask who pays for it.
• Ask what happens if you are ill. No SSP self-employed. Just so you know it going in.
• Get the rate confirmed in writing before you hand in notice anywhere.

09 · The one that actually decides it

UCAT is 24 September. Chemistry resit after that.

Forty hours a week plus 3 hours 40 in the car is not a job you do alongside UCAT prep. It is the thing you do instead of UCAT prep. Between now and late September that is the whole question, and the money is a footnote to it.

So ask for reduced hours until October, full time after. Say why. It is a completely reasonable request and it costs them nothing.