Agency Workers:Anti Avoidance Provisions.

For those of you with a tendency to prevaricate and avoid decision making until the last moment then please have your cheque books handy because the Agency Workers regulations will have teeth. Tribunals will be able to make an additional award of up to £5,000 where any hirer and/or are found to have breached the anti avoidance provisions.

Moves to evade the equal treatment regime by rotating staff between roles without genuine and substantive differentiation in roles will be ineffective. Indeed if a "structure" of assignments develops it is caught by

Regulation 9(5) 

This covers

• Length of the assignments
• The number of assignments with a particular Hirer, or hirers connected to that hirer. This rules out shuffling people between group companies
• The number of times an agency worker has worked in a new role with the hire or hirers connected to that hirer and whether the new role was the same role (substantively different needs to be demonstrate)
• Period of any break between assignments with the hirer and again connected parties. This needs to be a minimum of 6 weeks to restart the clock (qualifying period)

There are special rules applying to sickness, annual leave, jury service, lock outs and so on as well as the protections on maternity and paternity.