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Introduction to this document

Agency worker day one right response letter

Where an agency worker has made a written request for information about their day one rights, use our letter to formally respond within 28 days. If you fail to do so or your reply is evasive, an employment tribunal is entitled to draw adverse inferences.

Legal entitlements

Agency workers are entitled to two key rights from the first day of their temporary assignment with you. The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 give temporary agency workers rights to: (1) the same access to certain collective facilities that you provide; and (2) information on job vacancies. These are the day one rights.

Collective facilities

From day one of an assignment, agency workers are entitled to be treated no less favourably than a comparable directly recruited worker or employee in relation to access to collective facilities and amenities. It applies to collective facilities that you provide either to workers or employees as a whole or to particular groups, and it may include such things as a staff canteen, a workplace crèche, staff car parking or transport services, prayer room, toilet and shower facilities, etc. These facilities are normally on-site, although they might be shared with other businesses. Agency workers are not, however, given enhanced rights over your employees - so if there’s a waiting list for the crèche, they would still need to join that list. You also don’t need to give access to off-site facilities which you don’t personally provide, such as subsidised access to an external gym, nor do you have to provide agency workers with other types of staff benefit. Plus, you also have the ability to use the defence of “objective justification” for any less favourable treatment, i.e. there’s a good business reason for treating the agency worker less favourably.

Job vacancies

Also from day one, all agency workers are entitled to be provided with information about any relevant job vacancies that would be available to a comparable worker or employee based at the same establishment, to give them the same opportunity to find permanent employment with you. You can choose how you publicise these, but the agency worker needs to know where and how to access the information. This doesn’t mean they have equal rights to actually be offered the job - simply to access the information and apply. So, you can still choose permanent staff over agency workers for job vacancies. The right also doesn’t apply in the context of a genuine headcount freeze where vacant posts have been ring fenced for redeployment purposes, or internal moves which are part of a business restructuring.

Written statement

Where an agency worker believes their day one rights have been breached, they can make a written request for information. If this happens, you then have 28 days to provide them with a written statement setting out all relevant information about access to collective facilities and/or job vacancies, and the reasons for your treatment in relation to those matters. Our Agency Worker Day One Right Response Letter includes four optional paragraphs: (1) confirmation that the agency worker is allowed access to the relevant collective facilities in the same way as permanent staff; (2) the practical reasons why you can’t provide them with equal access to the collective facilities, e.g. there’s a waiting list; (3) confirmation that details of job vacancies are available to them; or (4) confirmation that there are no current relevant vacancies.