Turning Compliance into Commercial Advantage: Digital Onboarding and Recruitment Growth with Abbie Black, Senior Client Operations Manager at Amiqus

Okay, now let's dig down.

I want to talk about the Security, Asylum and Immigration Act.

How does it affect the recruiters in the UK, please?

This act is a real, we're seeing it as a real structural shift when it comes to liability for right to work checks.

I might start by just giving a bit of an overview of what the act does.

So the act received a royal assent at the end of last year in 2025.

And section 48 of that act essentially extends the civil penalty liabilities beyond a traditional employment model that we've seen up until this point, in the sense that it's moving obligations from the employer to the organisation.

We refer to it as like the hosting organisation.

So there's a key language change in the act moving from employee to worker.

So what that means for recruiters is that it's moving and direct employers.

It's moving the compliance obligations and the liability to contractors, subcontractors, zero hour contract workers.

to the organisation that they are working in.

So whereby previously it would have maybe been more of if contractors are placed in an organisation, it's the recruiter responsible for checking those individuals.

The organisation that those workers are going to be working in is also going to become liable for ensuring that those individuals have the right to work in the UK.

So as I said, it received royal assent at the end of last year.

We are still waiting on some of the details to be released of that.

So we're expecting the new right to work rules to come into place in October 2026.

But the specific guidance hasn't yet been published.

But I would say that the direction is unambiguous.

It is extending that requirement for organisations to check not just their direct employees, but also ensuring that they are checking contractors, subcontractors, etc.

So do we see this as a duplication where the recruiter will do those checks because they're already obliged to and then the end hirer will also do those checks?

So it's a really good question.

I would say this is one of the items that we are waiting to get more guidance from government on.

So through different working groups, we are waiting to, the Home Office is expected to publish more worked examples of different supply chain scenarios because Sort of as you've mentioned there, different scenarios, different supply chains can be complex.

So we're expecting more of that to be worked through with the government.