Your Helping Business

‘COMPLIANCE’ AND LEGAL STUFF

Whether you set up a formal company structure or not, you still have a number of ‘compliance’ issues to contend with.

Sole Traders as well as Limited Companies have to comply with all applicable Health & Safety regulations and its essential that you know and understand these before you start trading. It only takes one ‘accident’ or complaint to put you out of business if you don’t know the ‘rules’.

But it all depends what you are doing, what you’re providing, and how you’re operating. I’ll keep repeating this – find an advisor who is familiar with the rules as they apply to small business startups.

If you employ people in any way, which you can do as a sole trader as well as a company – the rules apply. So don’t be tempted to pay people in cash for ‘odd jobs’ unless you’re carrying out a ‘business to business’ transaction with them. Although not illegal this practice is strongly disliked by the tax authorities and can lead to ‘investigations’.

Then if you have premises, there are fire regulations – and the list goes on.

If you are working from home also be careful.

There may be covenants on your property or rules if you’re in rented accommodation that prevent you (apparently) from carrying on a business.

Some of these rules are specific and often relate to livestock or car dealing, but in general, as long as you are not retailing from home and being visited by a stream of customers or deliveries of stock all day then that’s usually acceptable, as it is to hold the occasional promotional event at home.

It’s also OK in most cases to carry on any form of administrative work from home. The restrictions are all about people visiting the premises in noticeable numbers and having lots of noticeable ‘stuff’ on and around the property.

It’s quite OK to see coaching or therapy clients at your home as they will normally arrive one by one and there will only be a few ‘visitors’ in any day.

Watch car parking though – make sure your clients can park somewhere that isn’t likely to ‘upset’ the neighbours!

Insurance

Depending on what you do you are likely to need both personal (or professional) and public liability insurance, and special insurance for particular things that you do. Anything ‘hands on’ with people or animals or working with special equipment is likely to need special provision.

You are unlikely to need specialist insurance as a Coach but you will need it if you conduct any form of ‘hands on’ therapy including hypnotherapy.

Make sure you have your insurance in place before you start.

Limited Company or not, you will need a set of Terms and Conditions, a Privacy Policy and some form of ‘Disclaimer’, particularly when your coaching or therapy service requires the client to undertake some form of ‘homework’ between consultations, whatever that might be.

Terms and conditions are relatively standard and can be copied from a similar provider and amended.
Likewise, there is a ‘standard’ GDPR compliant Privacy Policy which again be amended to fit your business.
You can do the amendments and then pass them by a lawyer for checking.

It shouldn’t take you long, but it’s better than paying several hundred or even thousands of pounds to have each of them drawn up from scratch.

Disclaimers again you can copy and amend. These are more specific but the most common are medical disclaimers when you are providing some form of treatment, results disclaimers when you are providing coaching, mentoring or training and accident disclaimers when you are providing any form of sports or exercise activity. The list goes on!

Copy and paste from a similar provider, amend, and get someone, preferably a lawyer who is familiar with your area of business, to check it.