The advice given in this page relates only to freelances you may engage to work on your production. The hiring of staff is of course a matter for each ITV Company. Whether you are dealing with freelances brought in specifically for your production or with staff, you should rely on the advice of the appropriate in-house manager of the ITV company for which you are producing. The following may, though, be helpful as general guidance.

Some of your freelance production office personnel, shooting crew and post-production crew are regarded by the law as employees, and others are regarded as self-employed. You may engage the services of yet others through company-to-company contracts under which a package of people and equipment is supplied.

You are therefore likely to be negotiating and paying wages or salary to some, with the consequent obligation to deduct National Insurance contributions and PAYE tax, as well as to make employer's NI contributions; while receiving and paying invoices for fees to others.

Every year, the unit of the Inland Revenue which deals with the film industry and the independent production sector of the television industry (London Provincial 10 in Gateshead) publishes guidance for producers and the freelances who work for them which includes a list of job functions that they accept as being subject to engagements on a self-employed basis. To see the current version of this guidance, click here.