Details of proposed changes to the Employment Agency Regulations have been released by the Government, and it appears that they may cause some problems for employers.

At present, staff hired through an agency have to go through immigration checks from both the agency and the employer. This situation is obviously not ideal, as it involves costly and time-consuming unnecessary duplication of the process. The Government is now proposing that the check should be carried out solely by the employer.

According to the consultation paper detailing the proposals, many employment agencies carry out the majority of their business over the Internet, and it seems likely that a number of them are not performing the checks that they are required to.

Rather than devoting time and resources to enforce the current regulations, which would almost certainly impede the business of legitimate online agencies, the Government would rather remove the requirement for checks from agencies altogether. Employment agencies are regarded as essential to the flexibility and dynamism of the economy, so the Government is reluctant to hamper their smooth operation.

However, if the proposed changes come into effect, the obligation to complete immigration checks will reside solely with the employer. This creates a potential problem in that prospective new employees could advance a long way through the recruitment process before it is discovered that they are not eligible to work in the UK, which would a waste a lot of the employer’s time and money.

To counter this, employers should seek to make sure that they only deal with reputable employment agencies who have basic screening procedures in place in order to minimise the chances of a potential recruit falling foul of an immigration check.

Technorati Tags: Agency Proposals, Employment Agency Regulations, Immigration Checks