On 8 September 2026, FCSA and six other temporary-labour bodies wrote jointly to government asking for guaranteed hours reforms to be paused for agency workers. The signatories, namely FCSA, the Association of Labour Providers, APSCo, the REC, TEAM, Professional Passport and the TRN, argue that applying the measure to temporary agency work misreads why people choose it in the first place.
Guaranteed hours, part of the wider employment rights package, would require workers on irregular schedules to be offered a contract reflecting the hours they regularly work. The intent is sound. The problem is what happens when it is bolted onto a labour model built on flexibility.
What Are Guaranteed Hours and Who Do They Affect?
Guaranteed hours require employers to offer eligible workers a contract that reflects the hours they have regularly worked over a reference period. The policy targets one-sided flexibility, where workers carry all the uncertainty and none of the security.
For directly employed staff on zero-hours arrangements, the logic holds. For agency workers, the picture is different. Many take agency assignments precisely because they want to vary their hours, move between placements, or fit work around study, caring responsibilities or a second income.
The joint letter draws on evidence that flexibility is a primary reason workers choose agency work rather than a compromise they tolerate. Force a fixed-hours contract onto that model and you risk removing the feature that makes it valuable.
Why Have Seven Bodies Written to Government?
Seven trade associations rarely agree on wording, let alone sign the same letter. That they did signals how seriously the sector views the risk to the temporary labour market.
The concern is practical, not ideological. In a layered supply chain, an agency places a worker with an end hirer through an umbrella company or directly. Assignments start and end at the client’s pace, not the agency’s. Building a guaranteed-hours obligation into that arrangement raises hard questions:
- Who is the employer that owes the guaranteed hours: the agency, the umbrella or the hirer?
- How is a reference period calculated when a worker moves between several placements?
- What happens when a client ends an assignment mid-reference-period?
Without clear answers, agencies face liability they cannot control and workers lose the freedom that drew them to agency work. The letter asks government to pause application to agency workers while these mechanics are worked through, not to abandon the policy.
What Should Recruiters and Umbrella Companies Do Now?
Nothing in the reforms is settled for agency workers, and FCSA does not speculate on where the policy lands. What is confirmed is that the direction of travel adds obligations across the temporary labour supply chain, and that responsibility in a layered chain is only ever as clear as your contracts make it.
That is the practical lesson from every recent change, from joint and several liability to the October right to work extension: ambiguity about who holds a duty is where liability festers. Agencies and umbrella companies should:
- Map exactly who employs each worker in every engagement model they operate.
- Record where duties sit in writing, so accountability is documented before a compliance check, not reconstructed after one.
- Track the consultation and any draft regulations rather than react once they land.
FCSA Members already operate to a standard that requires this clarity of contract and employment status. The Codes assessed under FCSA Accreditation demand that a Member can show who employs a worker and on what terms. When a new obligation arrives, that groundwork is the difference between a straightforward adjustment and a scramble.
FCSA’s Position
Worker protection and flexibility are not opposites. The guaranteed hours measure is aimed at genuine one-sided flexibility, and that aim is right. But agency work is a deliberate choice for many, and reforms designed for permanent zero-hours staff should not be transplanted onto it without understanding the model.
FCSA supports a pause for agency workers so the mechanics can be resolved properly. Rushed application helps no one, least of all the workers the policy is meant to protect.
Recruiters and umbrella companies weighing how upcoming reforms affect their obligations should review the standards behind FCSA Accreditation and check current providers on the FCSA Members register. Clear employment status is the foundation everything else is built on.
