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PAS – Going west any time soon?


When we last updated PayrollProfessional readers about the Institute’s PAS, the first few employers and one solitary bureau had just received confirmation that they had achieved the PAS kitemark. Things have moved on apace since then, explains Don Macarthur HMRC retiree


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hose attending the annual awards event at the prestigious Celtic Manor Hotel in September will have noticed quite a lengthy queue of people awaiting their turn to receive public recognition of their Payroll Assurance Scheme (PAS) kitemarks. It was really rewarding to see the obvious pride in their faces as they each took their turn to come up onto the stage. The names of the kitemarked organisations had already been published on the CIPP website, but of course there is no substitute for the personal buzz that comes from recognition at a big awards event. And one consequence of this was a considerable flurry of others attending the conference asking to sign up for PAS or to find out more information about how to start the process. And interest has continued to grow since then. So what sort of growth are we seeing? Is it just increased numbers?


Geographical spread The first few UK organisations applying for assessment were all in southern England, but those days are long gone now. We have now assessed employers and bureaux from Sussex in the south to the


Shetland Islands in the north. Our most easterly assessment was in Lincolnshire, while in the west… Hang on a minute, the west seems to be lagging behind a bit. Come on, you readers in Northern Ireland or West Wales or southwest England! Do you not think you westerners should be keeping pace with your payroll colleagues at the other extremities of the country?


Employers of all sizes… The list of organisations that have been assessed includes everyone from the smallest employers to the very largest – with employee numbers from two figures to six figures. The applications from very small employers are especially pleasing, helping the CIPP achieve its objective of increasingly representing and supporting payroll teams of all sizes. This has been achieved partly by competitive pricing and successful marketing, but it also demonstrates a strong appetite among small employers for practical and realistic advice. The word is spreading that for a small business or a small charity or club, for example, the process of going through a PAS assessment provides some


...REALLY USEFUL AND PRACTICAL POINTERS TO HELP IMPROVE COMPLIANCE AND INCREASE ORGANISATIONAL EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS GENERALLY


44 PayrollProfessional


really useful and practical pointers to help improve compliance and increase organisational efficiency and effectiveness generally.


…and bureaux of all sizes The increase in our bureau business has probably been the biggest growth area for PAS over the past few months, after a deliberately cautious start. Initially we felt that our priority was to hone and refine our techniques for assessing the processes which employers use to ensure compliance. Assessing organisations whose business is all about installing and managing such processes for employers was clearly going to be a challenge of a different order and a different character. But over the past six months or so we have quickly built confidence in the application of PAS to bureaux and agents large and small, and our register of organisations with the kitemark now includes quite a number of these. How does a bureau assessment differ from an employer’s assessment? The core principle is the same. We are looking essentially to see whether the organisation being assessed is doing all that it reasonably can to ensure compliance with payroll-related legislation, whether that is compliance by an employer under assessment or by the clients of a bureau or accountancy firm. So, in a bureau assessment we do not look at how compliant the clients are: we look at how well the bureau supports and steers a


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