Personal health budget holders: data protection advice
A personal health budget is an amount of money to pay for your specific health needs. The NHS gives it to you or manages it for you. You (or a family member, or your personal representative) can spend it on therapies, personal care and equipment. You may use the money to get a personal assistant. This is someone you choose to provide the support you need, in the way that suits you best.
Using a personal assistant through an agency
You may choose to use a personal assistant via a third party (for example, a care agency). In this case the agency would be the legal employer. You would not be directly responsible for protecting the personal assistant’s personal information. However, information may need to be kept at your address. This is so you can manage the personal assistant and the package of care. The care agency will help you to understand what you need to do to look after this information.
Employing a personal assistant directly
You may choose to hire the personal assistant yourself. This may give you more choice over how you can use your personal assistant to help you lead your life fully. However, if you hire a personal assistant (not via a care agency) you are their employer. That means you need to protect the privacy of their personal information. It can feel daunting to have this responsibility. However, this guidance takes you through the steps you can take, as an employer, to use and protect people’s information properly.
These IG pages provide clear and consistent IG advice and guidance to patients and service users, health and care staff and IG professionals. NHS England convenes a working group to check and challenge the guidance.
Further information
Skills for Care have produced a toolkit to help you to think about your responsibilities as an employer.
Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) provides impartial advice to employers and employees.
Pay & Employment Rights Service (PERS) is a registered charity and provides employment support.
MyCareBudget contains templates that support people to run their personal health budgets. They are written by people that run personal health budgets.
Last edited: 7 May 2026 4:52 pm