Outside IR35, in short
Outside IR35 means a contractor is engaged as genuinely self-employed for a specific piece of work, responsible for their own tax and National Insurance, rather than being treated as an employee for tax purposes. It’s a legal determination, not a preference, and it has to be made role by role, not decided once and applied everywhere.
Since 2021, medium and large private-sector businesses have had to make that determination themselves, taking what HMRC calls “reasonable care” over the decision. Get that assessment wrong, and the liability can land back with the business. Get it right, and the ongoing tax liability sits with us, as the fee-payer, not with you. We help clients get that initial assessment right, and our solution is fully insured, so the risk genuinely stays where it belongs.
We place contractors on whichever basis genuinely fits a role: inside IR35, outside IR35, PAYE, umbrella, fixed-term or interim, across the disciplines and sectors we work in. Below is how that works specifically for engineering, project and technical contracting.
Outside IR35 Engineering Contractors
Specialist engineering, project and technical contractors, placed properly, whichever side of IR35 the role sits on.
This page splits into two, because the businesses who read it aren’t asking the same question. Jump to whichever one is actually you.
Already using contractors outside IR35
You know how this works. You’ve probably got two or three agencies on the go and nothing’s on fire. Before you read any further, a few questions worth sitting with:
● When did you last actually see the Status Determination Statement for one of your current contractors, not just their CV and day rate?
● If HMRC opened an enquiry on one of your live engagements tomorrow, could your current supplier produce the working practices document behind it, or would someone be writing it that afternoon?
● When a contract got extended or the scope changed, was the status determination reviewed again, or did everyone assume it still held?
● Is your supplier’s answer to “how do you handle this” a process, or a version of “we’ve always done it this way”?
If any of those land slightly wrong, that’s not a reason to panic, most engagements run for years without ever being tested. But it’s exactly the gap that shows up at the worst possible moment, when HMRC asks the question first.
Here’s what we’d want you to see before deciding whether there’s room for another name on your supplier list.
Speed
Good contract engineers don’t stay on the market long. Our process is built to move quickly on the right person without cutting corners to get there, so speed and rigour aren’t competing with each other.
A proper approach
Every role starts with the same question: does this genuinely sit outside IR35, or does it just sound better that way? We’d rather tell you a role should be inside IR35 than place someone into an outside arrangement that won’t hold up to scrutiny.
Process that holds up
Status determination statement, working practices documented properly, contract terms that reflect how the role actually runs day to day rather than how it reads on paper. None of this is complicated. It’s detail work, applied consistently, every time, and it’s usually what separates a clean engagement from a problem eighteen months later.
Experience with the edge cases
Anyone can manage a straightforward contract. The value shows up when it isn’t, the extension that quietly changes the shape of a role, the scope creep that starts to look like disguised employment, the working pattern that needs a second look before it becomes a problem. We’ve handled enough of these to know what to watch for.
Give us one role and compare the paperwork against what you’ve currently got. That’s a fairer test than anything we could write here.
Thought about it, haven’t taken the leap?
Something about outside IR35 contracting felt too exposed and you shelved it. That was probably the right call given whatever you were being offered at the time, most businesses that pull back are responding to something real, not being overly cautious.
So it’s worth being specific about what that risk actually is, rather than leaving it as a vague sense of unease.
Getting the initial assessment wrong isn’t a paperwork slip. If a role is wrongly determined and HMRC decides reasonable care wasn’t taken, the liability for the tax that should have been deducted, plus penalties and interest, can land back with your business, sometimes years after the engagement has ended. That’s the real shape of the risk, and it’s reasonable that it gave you pause.
Here’s specifically what changes if you work with us:
● You carry out and document a full and accurate assessment for each role. If needed, we can provide the tools to support a compliant process and help demonstrate that reasonable care has been taken.
● Once that’s in place, the ongoing tax liability as fee-payer sits with us, not you, covered by our fully insured solution.
● If anything were ever challenged, it doesn’t land on you the way it would if you were running this entirely in-house without that support.
None of that requires committing to a programme. The usual way back in is one role, run properly, so you can see how it actually feels before deciding whether to do more of it.
Start with one role
Whether you’re comparing us against a supplier you already use, reconsidering something you tried before, or looking to hand off the risk side entirely, the easiest way to see how we work is to give us a single role and judge us on it.
