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.
Since then the government has said that it will provide additional guidance on record-keeping requirements under the AWRs.
It is understood that the Labour party intends to tackle rogue employment agencies and proposal have included the removal of the "Swedish derogation" from the AWRs.
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