It has been over three years since Vince Cable's
announcement that the government was committed to reviewing the
Agency Workers Regulations (AWRs), despite a proposed review period
of 18 months. The expressed aim of the review is to
"simplify and streamline the UK recruitment sector...scrapping
unnecessary rules and making the remaining ones more comprehensive
to business, so they can use agency workers as flexibly as
possible".
The subsequent government report "Progress on Reform",
published in March 2013, provided a timetable for employment law
reform and promised a review of the AWRs to commence
"shortly". The focus of the review was on record
keeping issues and the results were published in November
2014. The findings from the consultation were that the
temporary work agencies had difficulties obtaining the necessary
information from the end-user client about their employees'
terms and conditions in order to comply with the equal treatment
requirements.
