What does it cost to hire a personal assistant in the UK?

A full-time personal assistant costs a UK employer £40,308 a year on the median salary, once £4,493 of employer National Insurance and £861 of pension contributions are added, before you have recruited anyone, bought a laptop or covered a holiday. The Office for National Statistics puts the median at £34,954 a year in its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2025 (Table 14.7a, occupation group 4215, personal assistants and other secretaries), and the middle half of that group earns between £28,565 and £43,903.

How much is a PA paid, and why might yours differ?

ASHE is drawn from a 1% sample of PAYE records, so it reports pay that was actually paid. The annual figures are for the tax year to 5 April 2025 and for people who had been in the job for more than a year; the 2025 edition is provisional, published on 23 October 2025. The group mixes personal assistants with other secretaries, so a PA to the partners of a city-centre consultancy will sit above the median, and an executive assistant who runs projects higher again. Adverts for the job as you would write it are the test of the national number.

What does an employer pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. 15% of earnings above £5,000 a year in the 2026 to 2027 tax year: £4,493 on the median salary. The Employment Allowance takes up to £10,500 off an eligible employer's annual bill, which matters to a two-partner firm with one other employee and makes no difference to a consultancy of twenty that has used it already.

• Pension. The automatic enrolment minimum is 3% of qualifying earnings, the band between £6,240 and £50,270: £861. A consultancy that wants to keep a good PA will usually pay more than the minimum.

• Holiday. At least 5.6 weeks a year, 28 days for a five-day week, bank holidays included if you choose. In a firm with one PA there is nobody to cover those weeks, so the partners' diaries go back to the partners.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 gives a median cost per hire of £2,000 for employees below senior management, a survey median from a small sample: the 223 employers who could estimate it to within a fifth. If you fill the job through an agency, your own figure will be above that median.

• Costs that are harder to put a number on. Sick pay, the laptop and the licences, and the months before a new PA knows which client the senior partner will always take a call from.

The on-costs of any other post are in what it costs to employ someone in the UK.

What does a PA do in a management consultancy?

The National Careers Service lists the job as responding to enquiries by phone, email and in person, setting up meetings, taking notes and drafting letters and emails, preparing documents and presentations, keeping files, records and contact lists up to date, and arranging travel. In a management consultancy the diary is the partners' selling time, and every proposal meeting has to be found a slot between engagements. The meeting notes become the actions that the client expects to see by Friday. The contact list is the CRM, and it is only as good as the last time someone updated it. The expenses come back from client sites as a pocketful of receipts at month end. The proposal needs a first draft before a partner shapes it.

A consultancy hires a PA because the partners are doing all of this themselves, and business development stops whenever delivery gets busy. That is a good reason to hire, and also a reason to look at which parts of the job need a person in the room.

Can AI do part of a personal assistant's job?

An AI worker has a written role, access to the systems you already use and a person who reviews its work. For the PA's week it can take on diary and scheduling, finding the slot and sending the confirmations and the reminders; meeting follow-up and notes, writing up the notes, sending the actions and chasing them; expense and receipt chasing, so the receipts arrive before month end; CRM upkeep, so every contact and conversation is logged; and the first draft of a proposal from your past proposals and the notes of the first meeting. Each is a defined piece of work with a record of what was done.

What stays with a person?

The phone stays with a person: the call from a client who wants the partner now, and the judgement about whether to interrupt. So does anything that depends on knowing the partners: who to seat next to whom, which meeting can slip and which cannot, what the senior partner means when she says "soon". Travel, sensitive papers and the board meeting stay with the person too. A PA who does those things well is worth the median and more; the question is whether that person should also spend the afternoon chasing receipts.

PA, AI worker, or both?

Write down the week you are hiring for and split it: what needs a person who knows the partners, and what is repeatable admin with a record. The honest answer may be a PA who is paid for judgement, and an AI worker on the diary, the notes, the CRM and the expenses behind them. See how AI staff compare with a virtual assistant and with hiring an administrator; for a general administrator, the same arithmetic is in what it costs to hire an administrator, and what an AI worker is explains how one is specified and managed. The price we start from is on the homepage.

For a consultancy hiring a PA, the diary, the notes, the CRM and the receipts could go to an AI worker first, and the phone and the judgement that comes from knowing the partners would stay with the person. Talk to our agent about the afternoons of receipts and CRM updates.