The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003

Requirement to obtain agreement to terms with work-seekers

14.—(1) Subject to paragraph (7), before first providing any work-finding services to a work-seeker, an agency or employment business shall obtain the agreement of the work-seeker to the terms which apply or will apply as between the agency or employment business and the work-seeker including—

(a) whether the agency or employment business will operate as an employment agency or an employment business in relation to the work-seeker;

(b) the type of work the agency or employment business will find or seek to find for the work-seeker; and

(c) in the case of an employment business, the terms referred to in regulation 15, and in the case of an agency which is to provide any work-finding services mentioned in regulation 16, the terms referred to in that regulation.

(2) Subject to paragraph (3), an agency or employment business shall ensure that —

(a) all terms in respect of which the agency or employment business has obtained a work-seeker’s agreement are recorded in a single document, or where this is not possible, in more than one document; and

(b) copies of all such documents are given at the same time as each other by the agency or employment business to the work-seeker with whom they are agreed before the agency or employment business provides any services to the work-seeker to which the terms contained in such documents relate.

(3) Paragraph (2) shall not apply in the case of an employment business where the work-seeker has been given a written statement of particulars of employment in accordance with Part I of the Employment Rights Act 1996(1).

(4) Neither an agency nor an employment business may vary any terms set out in a document issued in accordance with paragraph (2), unless the work-seeker to whom they relate agrees to the variation.

(5) If the agency or employment business and the work-seeker agree to any variation in the terms set out in the documents referred to in paragraph (2), the agency or employment business shall as soon as possible and in any event no later than the end of the fifth business day following the day on which the agency or employment business and the work-seeker agree to the variation give to the work-seeker a single document containing details of the terms as agreed to be varied and stating the date on or after which it is agreed that the varied terms are to take effect.

(6) Neither an agency nor an employment business may make the continued provision of any services by it to a work-seeker conditional on the agreement by the work-seeker to any such variation.

(7) This regulation shall not apply in the case of an agency where the only service provided by the agency to the work-seeker concerned is the provision of information to him in the form of a publication.

(1)

1996 c. 18; Part I has been amended by the Employment Rights (Dispute Resolution) Act 1998 (c. 8), section 1(2)(a), (b), the Employment Relations Act 1999 (c. 26), section 32(3) and prospectively by the Employment Act 2002 (c. 22), sections 35, 36, 37, 54 and Schedule 8.