Booking agency cleaners used to be a phone call and a start time. Since 1 October 2026 it carries more risk for the business that books them. The right to work rules now reach people who are not your employees, and the Fair Work Agency has been inspecting pay records since April. If you run facilities for an office, a school site or a set of retail units and you are lining up winter cover, this is what to check before the first shift.
This is written for the facilities manager who books cleaning cover through an agency or a contractor, rather than employing cleaners directly.
Why agency cleaners are now your right to work problem too
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 widened the illegal working rules from 1 October 2026. The duty to prevent illegal working now covers people engaged on worker contracts and as individual subcontractors, not just employees, and a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker can reach a business further up the contract chain, even where it has no direct contract with the person doing the work.
Cleaning is exactly where this bites. A cleaning firm subcontracts an evening to a sole trader, who sends a friend under a substitution clause, and the person mopping your floors at 7pm is two steps removed from anyone who checked their documents. The Home Office code of practice says a business without a direct contract needs three things to protect itself: written terms, control over who can be substituted, and a system for checking identity.
In practice that means asking your agency or contractor, in writing, three questions. Who carries out the right to work check, and when? Are subcontracting and substitution allowed, and if so on what terms? How will you know the person who arrives is the person who was checked? Keep the answers on file. A named list of who is on site each week, matched to the agency’s records, is the simplest identity control there is.
What the agency should already have done
A proper agency checks right to work before a first shift, using a share code or eVisa for most non British workers, and repeats the check where permission is time limited. It holds references, and for most office and commercial sites a basic DBS check, which shows unspent convictions only. Schools, care homes and healthcare sites set their own vetting rules, often an enhanced check, so tell the agency which applies before anyone is chosen.
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, the agency also has to get information from you before it supplies anyone: the hours, the location, the experience needed and any risks to health and safety. If an agency books a cleaner without asking what chemicals they will use or whether they will work alone, treat that as a warning.
Pay rates, travel and the Fair Work Agency
The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 for workers aged 21 and over, and £10.85 for those aged 18 to 20. The agency pays the cleaner, not you, but a charge rate that cannot cover those figures plus holiday pay and employer costs is a sign that someone is being underpaid somewhere.
Two common gaps in cleaning pay are travel and deductions. Time spent travelling between sites during a shift counts as working time for minimum wage purposes, so a cleaner doing three offices in an evening must be paid for the journeys between them. Deductions for uniforms or equipment cannot take pay below the minimum wage.
The Fair Work Agency, which took over employment agency regulation and minimum wage enforcement from 7 April 2026, can inspect without warning and name employers who fall short. Its target is the employer, but a client whose site appears in an investigation will be asked questions. Choosing a supplier who can show you its pay rates is cheap insurance.
The 12 week point for long bookings
Under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, a cleaner who works in the same role for you for 12 weeks gains the right to the same basic pay, hours and holiday as a cleaner you employ directly would receive. From day one they must have access to your staff facilities and be told about permanent vacancies.
If you employ no cleaners of your own, the comparison is with what you would pay, so the impact is usually small. Where you do have an in house team, check the rates before week 12, not after. Breaks of six weeks or more reset the clock, but rotating people to avoid it is unlawful.
Site safety: what stays with you
The agency handles pay and vetting. The site is yours. Before a new cleaner starts, make sure they get a short induction covering the fire exits and assembly point, alarm and key procedures, and where the safety data sheets for your cleaning products are kept. Products that need COSHH controls should be stored and labelled so a newcomer can follow them without being shown twice.
Evening and early morning cleaning is often lone working. Agree who the cleaner calls if something goes wrong and how they confirm they have left the building. Write it down, give a copy to the agency and keep one in the cleaner’s cupboard.
Swapping to a direct hire
If a cleaner turns out to be the one you want to keep, check the agency’s terms first. The 2003 Regulations allow a transfer fee only within limits, and an agency must give you the option of an extended hire period instead. The relevant period ends 14 weeks after the first day of the assignment or 8 weeks after the last, whichever is later. If you are changing cleaning contractor altogether rather than one person, the TUPE rules apply, which we cover in TUPE when changing cleaning contractor.
A practical start this week
Send your current agency or contractor the three right to work questions and file the reply. Ask for the hourly pay rate the cleaners on your site receive. Check whether anyone has passed 12 weeks. Then walk the site at the time the cleaners arrive and see whether a newcomer could find the fire exit, the data sheets and a phone number without asking.
If you need vetted cleaning and facilities staff for winter cover, Flamingo Workforce supplies them across England and Wales, with right to work and references checked before the first shift. Get in touch and tell us about the site.