Agency workers and the twelve week qualifying period: what it puts on your payslip

The published figures

What it puts on, or takes off, the payslip

Basic rate for weeks one to eleven

Whatever the agency agreed with you, subject only to the minimum wage. Nothing in these regulations sets this figure, which is why a rate that sits below what the hirer pays its own people is lawful for eleven weeks and can stop being lawful in the twelfth. The payslips for these weeks are the record of what the rate was before anything changed.

Basic rate from week twelve

The rate a directly recruited person doing the same job would have been on, worked out at the time your qualifying period commenced, plus any increase the hirer's own staff have had since. Where the hirer runs a published scale, that scale is the answer. Where every rate is individually negotiated and there is no going rate, there may be no relevant term on pay at all, and your rate can stay where it is.

Equal treatment or parity adjustment

Some agencies leave the contract rate alone and add a separate line instead, labelled parity, AWR uplift, equal treatment or week 12 adjustment. It is ordinary taxable pay and it belongs above the deduction block, not below it. Two things make it checkable: it should start in the pay period covering your twelfth week, and the rate plus the uplift should equal the comparison rate rather than approach it.

Overtime, shift and unsocial hours lines

Inside the comparison once the twelve weeks are up, because regulation 6(2) reads pay widely and the guidance names overtime, shift and unsocial hours allowances and risk payments for hazardous duties. One qualification matters: you have to meet the same conditions a direct recruit meets, so working hours the permanent staff happen to treat as overtime is not the same as working over standard hours.

Holiday pay and the leave line

Annual leave is its own heading in regulation 6(1)(f), separate from pay. Every worker already has 5.6 weeks from day one. What week twelve adds is the hirer's contractual leave above that floor, and the value of it, so a hirer that gives its own staff thirty days plus bank holidays has a relevant term. Acas describes three lawful ways to receive the extra: added to your entitlement, paid on top of the rate and itemised on each payslip, or paid in one go at the end and itemised on the final payslip.

Bonus and commission lines

A bonus is in or out depending on what it rewards. Regulation 6(2) includes any bonus or commission directly attributable to the amount or quality of the work you did. Regulation 6(3)(f) excludes a bonus given for another reason, such as encouraging loyalty or rewarding long service, and the guidance treats a flat rate bonus paid to all direct recruits as exactly that. Sales commission is usually in. A Christmas payment of the same amount to everybody is usually out.

What does not change at week twelve

Regulation 6(3) keeps five familiar things permanently outside the comparison: an occupational pension or any payment connected with retirement, occupational sick pay above statutory sick pay, redundancy pay, occupational maternity, paternity, adoption and parental bereavement pay, and a guarantee payment. None of them arrives with the new rate and none of them ever will under these regulations. The agency still has to enrol you in a pension as your employer, which is a separate duty with its own timetable.

Expenses, travel and subsistence

Regulation 6(3)(j) takes any payment for expenses you incurred in carrying out the employment out of the definition of pay, so a site or travel allowance the hirer pays its own staff is not something week twelve gets you. The guidance adds the other side of it: where you are paid through an umbrella and part of the money arrives as reimbursed travel, the total still has to reach the figure a direct recruit would have received.

What goes wrong

A break that paused the clock recorded as a reset

You are off for a fortnight and come back to find your twelve weeks starting again at one. Regulation 7(8)(a) pauses the count for a break of six calendar weeks or less for any reason at all, and regulation 7(5) carries the earlier weeks forward. The guidance works through the case people get wrong: five weeks between assignments and then two weeks off sick is seven weeks in total, but the clock paused at five and sickness pauses it again, so continuity holds.

A new title on the same job called a substantively different role

Regulation 7(3) needs all three of its conditions before a role becomes a new one, and a title is not one of them. The work or duties making up the whole or main part of the role must be substantively different, and the agency must have told you in writing what the new work is. The guidance is blunt about what does not count on its own: a changed line manager, a transfer between similar administrative functions, a move within one small business unit, or a different pay rate.

A rate that does not move in the twelfth week

The commonest failure is simply that nothing happens. No uplift, no new rate, no letter, and often nobody at the agency has been counting. The entitlement does not depend on anyone noticing it: regulation 5 applies once the period is complete. The evidence is two payslips and a date: the first shift for that hirer, twelve weeks forward with any pauses added, and the pay period that falls on the other side of it.

A change of agency or umbrella treated as a fresh start

Regulation 7(2) counts weeks in the same role with the same hirer, and regulation 7(3)(a) says so expressly, referring to a new role with the same hirer "whether supplied by the same or by a different temporary work agency". Being moved onto a different agency's books, or onto an umbrella, changes who pays you and not where you work. Regulation 3(5) is the other half: an intermediary in the chain does not stop you being an agency worker.

No written statement requested, so nothing has to be explained

Regulation 16 is the only route to the numbers you need and it only opens when you use it. The request must be in writing to the agency, which then has 28 days. Regulation 16(7) means you cannot make one until you are actually entitled to regulation 5 rights. Regulation 16(9) is the part worth knowing: where a tribunal finds the agency or hirer deliberately and without reasonable excuse failed to answer, or the answer was evasive or equivocal, it may draw any inference it considers just and equitable, including that the right was infringed.

The comparison made against the person at the next desk

Regulation 5(1) is a hypothetical test: what you would have got for doing the same job had the hirer recruited you directly. A real person only enters under regulation 5(3), and regulation 5(4) then requires that person to be under the hirer's supervision and direction, in the same or broadly similar work, with a similar level of qualification and skills, at the same establishment or another one if there is nobody suitable at yours. Being paid less than a colleague with a different ticket, or more than a trainee, settles nothing on its own.

The pension and enhanced sick pay expected to arrive with the rate

They do not, and this is the disappointment built into the regulations rather than a payroll error. Regulation 6(3)(b) excludes any payment by way of a pension, allowance or gratuity connected with retirement, and regulation 6(3)(a) excludes occupational sick pay, so the hirer's scheme and its enhanced sick pay stay out of the comparison at week twelve and for as long as the assignment lasts. Acas says the same about sick pay in terms: agency workers are not entitled to the same enhanced sick pay as direct employees even after twelve weeks.

What to check on your next payslip

• Regulation 7(2) counts twelve continuous calendar weeks in the same role with the same hirer, and regulation 7(4) counts any week in which you worked at all as one of them. It makes the start date, not the hours, the thing to record. Twelve Saturdays for the same hirer is twelve weeks, and an assignment described as part time reaches the same point on the same day as a full time one.
• Regulation 7(3) makes a role a new one only where all three of its limbs are met, and the third is that the agency has told you in writing what work the new role involves. It is the limb a hirer in a hurry misses. Where no written description of the new work reached you, the count has not restarted whatever the job title says, and the paperwork that should exist is a written notice from the agency and, behind it, the hirer's own written notification of the change.
• Regulation 6(1) is a closed list of six headings, and regulation 6(3) removes eleven specific payments from the pay heading. It turns an argument into a lookup. A payment is either inside those six headings and not on the exclusion list, or it is not part of equal treatment at all, and the eleven exclusions are where most of the disappointment lives.
• A written request under regulation 16(1) starts a 28 day clock on the agency, and regulation 16(3) lets you ask the hirer after 30 days. The statement has to set out the hirer's basic working and employment conditions and the factors the agency weighed in setting yours. Regulation 16(8) makes it admissible as evidence, so the answer, or the absence of one, is the record either way.
• Regulation 14 splits the liability, and regulation 14(3) is the agency's way out of it. The agency is liable for a regulation 5 breach to the extent it is responsible, unless it obtained or took reasonable steps to obtain the information from the hirer and then acted reasonably on it, in which case the hirer is liable instead. The hirer alone is liable for the day one rights in regulations 12 and 13. Two parties, and the paperwork decides which.
• Regulation 15 applies section 203 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to these regulations as though they were part of that Act. An agreement to give up a regulation 5 right is void, and the exceptions in section 203 are narrow, chiefly a settlement agreement meeting the statutory conditions or a conciliated agreement through Acas. A clause in an assignment schedule waiving equal treatment does not meet them.
• Regulation 9 reaches a pattern of assignments as well as a single one, and regulation 9(5) lists what a tribunal weighs. Where the most likely explanation for the structure is an intention to keep you short of the period, you are treated as having completed it anyway. The five factors are the length of the assignments, how many there were with the hirer and any hirer connected to it, how often a new role was not the same role, how often you returned to the same role, and the length of the breaks.

The 13 occupations this reaches, and how

Each line is specific to that trade. Where a scheme depends on how you are engaged rather than on the work itself, the line says so.

Baggage Handler

The registry names recruitment agencies for seasonal peaks among the employers of baggage handlers, which is the detail that makes the twelve weeks reachable. A summer peak booked from May to September is more than twelve weeks of calendar time even with days off in between, so a handler who thinks of the work as temporary passes the line in mid July. The hirer is the ground handling company or the airline running the ramp, not the airport, and the night, weekend and airside premiums it pays its own handlers are inside the comparison from that point.

CNC Machinist

Engineering agencies are in the registry's employer list and the entry warns that rolled up holiday pay can inflate the headline rate. Annual leave is a heading of its own in the comparison, separate from pay, and that distinction is what the warning turns on. The 5.6 weeks inside your rate is the statutory floor everybody has from day one. If the machine shop gives its own setters and operators more than that, the extra becomes a relevant term after twelve weeks, and it can be added to your entitlement, paid on top and itemised each period, or settled at the end of the assignment. An inflated hourly rate on its own is none of those.

Court Usher (HMCTS)

The registry records ushers supplied to HMCTS through named agencies and notes that they get neither the Civil Service pay framework nor the alpha pension. These regulations reverse only the first of those. Crown employment is expressly within their scope, so after twelve weeks in the same court the measure is the AA or AO band rate HMCTS would have paid somebody it recruited itself, including any London supplement attached to the post. Alpha is out for good, because a retirement benefit is excluded from the pay comparison, and an agency usher enrols in the agency's own scheme instead.

Exam Invigilator

Invigilators are almost always on a zero hours or casual contract with the school, college or university itself, and the regulations define an agency worker as somebody a temporary work agency supplies to work for and under the supervision of a hirer. With no agency in the chain there is no hirer either, only an employer, so no qualifying period can start however many exam seasons you have covered at the same centre. The official guidance puts direct engagement by an in house bank outside scope for the same reason. Being booked in through an agency instead would put you back inside, and the contract is what says which you are.

Forklift Operator

The registry names recruitment agencies and umbrella companies among the usual employers and records employer National Insurance and a margin coming out of the assignment rate. The ticket is what makes this role's comparison unusual. Where the site pays its own counterbalance, reach or VNA drivers more than its general operatives, that premium is part of basic pay and inside the comparison from week twelve, and the person you are measured against holds the same ticket rather than any warehouse worker. What stays outside is the cost of the licence itself, since money for an expense you incurred is not pay.

Metal Fabricator

The registry names engineering agencies alongside site and shutdown contractors, and shutdown work is where the arithmetic gets interesting. A run of short bookings for one client can look like separate jobs and still be one continuous count, because a gap of six weeks or less between them only pauses it. Where a pattern of assignments looks structured to keep you under the line, a tribunal can treat the period as complete and add an award of up to £5,000. Coding and site money in the hourly rate is inside the comparison; travel and subsistence paid as expenses is outside it by name.

Production Operative

The registry lists this role as PAYE or agency PAYE with recruitment agencies among the usual employers, and shift premia of ten to thirty per cent above a base at the National Living Wage. Those premia are the point here: a double day or three shift allowance the plant pays its own operatives is an unsocial hours allowance, which is inside the pay comparison once twelve weeks are complete, so the parity question is the whole rate for the shift rather than the headline hourly figure. An attendance or long service bonus paid flat to every direct recruit is expressly outside it, because it rewards staying rather than the work done.

Security Guard

The registry says the difference between agency and in house employment matters more on a guard's payslip than in almost any other job, and for this scheme it decides whether the scheme applies at all. Where a manned guarding company holds the contract, employs you and supervises and directs you on the client's premises, that is a managed service contract and the client is nobody's hirer. Where a staffing agency places you and the client's own manager runs your shift, the client is the hirer and the count starts. Twelve weeks on one site is unremarkable in this trade, so which of the two you are on is worth establishing early.

SEN Teaching Assistant

The registry puts this plainly: receive your payslip from an agency while working in a school and your terms are agency terms rather than NJC terms, and the Local Government Pension Scheme does not apply. Twelve weeks changes the first half of that sentence and never the second, because a pension sits outside the pay comparison for good. What the twelve weeks should reach is the spine point the school would have graded the post at. School holidays do not undo the count: a planned closure according to the employer's established custom is a pause, so an autumn term placement resumes in January where it stopped in December.

Sonographer

The registry puts locum sonographers working through agencies in the same sentence as NHS staff banks, and the regulations separate them. A trust bank shift is engagement by the trust itself, with no agency supplying anyone, so no qualifying period runs however many you do. An agency booking into the same ultrasound department does start one, and after twelve weeks the comparison covers the Agenda for Change rate and any recruitment and retention premium attached to the post. It does not cover the NHS Pension, which is why the registry's warning about patchy pension access survives the twelfth week unchanged.

Supply Teacher

The registry records three routes into a supply payslip and only the private agency one starts a qualifying period. Your hirer is the school, or the trust that legally owns it, and that is the whole question in supply: the official guidance uses your job as its own example, saying that where two schools are separate legal identities the period begins again and where they are one entity it carries on. A term of daily cover in one school passes twelve weeks around half term. The School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document never binds the agency, but what the school would pay a teacher it recruited itself becomes the measure once the period is complete.

Warehouse Operative

The registry records that a significant share of warehouse operatives come through agencies or umbrella companies, which is why the official guidance picks this trade for its own worked example on what breaks the count. Moving an operative off the production line into packing uses mostly the same skills and needs little training, so it is not substantively different and the weeks keep accumulating; moving the same person into an administrative role probably is different and probably does restart them. Peak season is where this bites, because a contract running from October to January is longer than twelve weeks even after a Christmas shutdown pause.

Welder

The registry lists self employed and agency work together as a route for welders, and the two land in opposite places. Genuinely in business on your own account, with the firm as your client, you are outside these regulations altogether. Supplied by an agency to weld under the firm's direction, you are inside them. The coding is then the thing to watch in any comparison, because a real comparator has to hold a similar level of qualification and skill: a coded TIG or MMA welder is measured against a coded welder on the books, not against a time served fabricator on the same shop floor.

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