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Agency Workers Directive

Tue 22 Jun 2010

The aim of the Directive is to ensure the protection of temporary agency workers by applying the principle of equal treatment.

This provides that the basic working and employment conditions of temporary agency workers should be, for the duration of their assignmentat a hirer, at least those that would apply if they had been recruited directly by that hirer to occupy the same job.

These basic working and employment conditions include - working time, overtime, breaks, rest periods, night work, holidays,and pay.In short, after the relevant qualifying period of 12 weeks in a given job, temporary agency workers will be legally entitled to equal treatment.

The Labour Provider and the Labour User will be responsible for breaches to the extent that they are responsible for the infringement.

An agency will have a defence if it can show that it took “reasonable steps” to obtain relevant information from the hirer about basic working and employment conditions and acted reasonably based on this information.

Regulations are to come into force on 1 October 2011.

Agencies need to work closely with hirers to plan and ensure compliance with the Regulations.

Information on this page relates to policies of the previous government and may not be up to date.

We will update this page with any further developments in due course

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