The True Cost of Hiring Private Household Staff in the UK

When most families start looking into hiring private household staff, the first number they focus on is the salary. It’s the obvious one, and understandably so. But salary is really just the headline figure. The true cost of employing someone in your home, properly and legally, includes a handful of other elements that rarely get much airtime until you’re partway through the process and they start showing up.

This guide walks through everything that sits underneath that headline salary figure, so you can go into the process with a clear, realistic picture of what hiring actually costs, not just what it pays.

Recruitment Agency Fees: What You’re Actually Paying For

If you’re using a specialist agency, and for most senior household roles we’d genuinely recommend it, you’ll usually pay a placement fee calculated as a percentage of the candidate’s first year salary. Fees vary across the UK household staffing market, but our standard fee is 20 percent of the candidate’s first year salary, reflecting the depth of vetting and search involved in placing senior household staff.

It can feel like a significant number on paper, so it’s worth being clear about what it buys you. A good agency fee covers reference verification with previous principals rather than just former employers, in depth interviews that go beyond the CV, and a search process that reaches candidates who aren’t actively browsing job boards. For senior or specialist roles in particular, that’s often the difference between a placement that lasts and one that doesn’t.

Here’s how that fee looks in practice across a few common roles, using typical UK salary ranges:

If you want the fuller picture on what each of these roles actually involves day to day, our Private Household Staff: The Complete UK Guide breaks down responsibilities and salary bands role by role.

The Ongoing Costs Most Households Forget to Budget For

This is where the real gap between “salary” and “true cost” tends to open up, because these are costs that continue every single pay period for as long as your staff member is employed.

Employer National Insurance

As of the 2026 to 2027 tax year, employers pay National Insurance at 15 percent on any earnings above £5,000 a year. On a £35,000 salary, for example, that works out to roughly £4,500 a year on top of the salary itself, a cost that’s easy to overlook if you’re only budgeting the headline figure.

Workplace pension contributions

If your staff member meets the auto enrolment criteria, and most full time staff will, you’re required to contribute a minimum of 3 percent of their qualifying earnings into a workplace pension. Many employers choose to offer more than the statutory minimum as part of a more attractive package, particularly for senior roles where retention matters.

Statutory Sick Pay

Recent changes mean Statutory Sick Pay is now payable from the very first day of illness, rather than after a waiting period, and there’s no longer a minimum earnings threshold to qualify. The standard rate for 2026 to 2027 is £123.25 a week. It’s a modest sum individually, but worth building into your planning rather than treating as an unexpected extra.

Holiday pay. Domestic staff are entitled to the same statutory minimum as any other UK employee, 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. If you’re budgeting an annual cost of employment, this needs to be factored in as time paid but not worked.

None of this is unique to household employment, it’s simply what being a compliant UK employer involves. Our guide on how to hire private household staff goes through the full legal side of becoming a domestic employer in more detail, including contracts and right to work checks.

One-Off Costs You’ll Likely Need at the Outset

A couple of smaller, one-off costs tend to come up early in the process and are worth having on your radar.

DBS checks are the most common. A Basic or Standard check costs £21.50, while an Enhanced check, which is often appropriate for live-in roles with close family access, costs £49.50. Most providers add a modest admin fee on top, typically another £10 to £20. If you’re working with an agency, reference checking and vetting are usually built into the placement fee already, so this is one area where using an agency can genuinely simplify the process rather than add to it.

Live-In vs Live-Out: How Accommodation Changes the Maths

Whether a role is live-in or live-out has a real effect on the total cost picture, just not always in the direction people expect.

Live-in roles usually come with a lower cash salary, since accommodation and often meals are provided as part of the package. But you’re taking on the cost of that accommodation, whether that’s a self-contained annexe, a staff flat, or a room within the main house, along with the associated running costs. Live-out roles carry a higher cash salary to compensate, but no accommodation overhead on your side.

Neither option is inherently cheaper. It really depends on the space you have available and what kind of arrangement suits your household. If you’re weighing this up for a specific role, our guide on private household staff salaries in the UK versus the US touches on how live-in packages tend to be structured and valued.

Bringing It All Together

Once you add agency fees, employer National Insurance, pension contributions, sick pay provision and the smaller one-off costs to the salary itself, the true first-year cost of a role typically runs somewhere between 30 and 40 percent above the headline salary figure. It’s not a hidden cost so much as an uncounted one, and knowing it upfront means no surprises three months into the search.

If you’re planning a hire and want a clearer sense of what it will actually cost for your specific situation, get in touch with our household staff agency and we’ll talk you through it properly, role by role, before you commit to anything.