AWR, the Agency Workers Regulations, came into force on October the 1^st 2011.

The Regulations gives agency workers the right to the same basic working and employment conditions they would receive if they were engaged directly by an end user client to do the same job; this is limited to conditions that relate to pay and working time. Agency workers will also be entitled to access facilities and amenities that an end user client provides to its own workers and to be advised by a client of vacancies which arise in the client’s business.

The fundamental principle of the AWR is to provide agency workers with the same basic working and employment conditions to that of a comparable permanent employee (essentially an employee doing the same or similar job as you) after a qualifying period; this being just 12 weeks (during one or more assignments). After this qualifying period, the agency worker would have the following rights;


Locums Limited has been preparing itself to be ready for the AWR even before it came into force. With the help of the very effective Merit Payroll Software, Locums limited is equipped to take on the Agency Workers Regulations. Merit Software is the market leader in Payroll and Billing solutions for recruitment agencies and a complete end-to-end solution for umbrella companies.