The REC sent out a press release to members around the recent amendments to the conduct of employment agencies and employment businesses regulations. Basically the changes resulted in agencies that place permanent candidates being relieved of some of their statutory obligations in terms of obtaining a client’s and candidate’s agreement to terms.
One of the key changes that came into force last October is:
The removal of the requirement to obtain a client’s agreement to terms of business.
Now, maybe I’m alone in this but what I didn’t understand from this is what that actually meant….can an agency phone a client and say “have you got any vacancies?”, take a few basic details and send over some candidates with a link to their terms of business on their website? If one of them gets placed the client owes them a fee? What about spec-ing in? Is just sending your terms of business with the CV enough (if the client takes the candidate on)? I thought client’s could (and do sometimes!) just say they didn’t agree to terms and then refuse to pay. That’s the sort of thing we hear about on the forum on a pretty regular basis.
So, the REC very kindly got Lorraine Laryea (REC Solicitor and Commercial Advisor) to give me more clarification:
The Conduct Regulations previously imposed a STATUTORY requirement for agencies to agree certain specific terms IN WRITING with clients. That statutory requirement has now been removed.
However it remains the case that in order for an agency to be able to recover a payment, contract law requires the agency to be able to demonstrate that there is a contract in place and an agreement for the client to pay a fee. However the contract could be a verbal contract (more difficult to prove, but still enforceable).
So, things have changed. What does this mean? Probably not a lot for the average recruiter – as I’m sure/know many have been operating for years on the basis that verbal agreement of fees “count”. Any recruiter with an ounce of sense will STILL be requiring clients to sign terms of business before they send over any candidate details.
In fact the REC will continue to require members to agree as a minimum the type of service it provides, its fees and how they are calculated, and where a refund/rebate is applicable – how that is calculated. I’m pretty sure that APSCo will be advising their members of the same.
Any thoughts on this?
