You run a twelve person firm and your administrator has just told you she will be off for three months. Invoices, the phones, the diary and the post all sat with her. You have never used an agency. This is what a small employer should check before taking on temporary admin staff, who is responsible for what, and how to make the first morning work. The rules quoted are the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 and HMRC’s umbrella company rules as they stand in September 2026.
Who employs the temp
Not you. When an agency supplies a temporary worker, the agency is the employment business. It engages the temp, pays them, deals with their tax and National Insurance, their holiday pay and their pension, and it invoices you for the hours worked. The temp is on your premises, working to your instructions, but the contract that pays them is with the agency.
So you do not run a payroll for the temp, issue a contract or handle their notice. The agency also has duties to you that a good one will meet without being asked. Under the 2003 Regulations the agency must agree its terms with you in writing before it supplies anyone, and it must have checked the worker’s identity, experience, training and qualifications against the job you described. The Fair Work Agency took over enforcement of those regulations in April 2026, so an agency that skips them now has an inspector to answer to.
Ask for the terms before the temp arrives. Read the notice period for ending the booking, the charge rate and the section on taking the temp on permanently.
The permanent hire clause
Many temp bookings end with the employer wanting to keep the person. The 2003 Regulations say the agency cannot simply charge you a transfer fee for that. It must offer you a choice between a fee and an extended hire period, where you keep the temp through the agency for an agreed further stretch and then employ them at no extra charge. The fee also falls away once eight weeks have passed since the booking ended or fourteen weeks since it started, whichever is later. If the terms do not give you that choice, ask why.
Right to work is the agency's check, and still your question
Because the agency engages and pays the temp, the agency carries out the right to work check under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and holds the statutory excuse if anything later proves wrong. You do not need to repeat it. Ask the agency to confirm in writing that the check has been done and on what date, and keep that email.
The twelve week rule
The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 give a temp two sets of rights. From the first day they must have the same access as your own staff to shared facilities, the kitchen, the car park, a subsidised canteen if you have one, and they must be told about any vacancies you advertise internally. After twelve weeks in the same role with you they are entitled to the same basic pay, holiday and working hours as someone you had recruited directly to do that job.
The agency pays the difference, but it can only do that if you tell it what a direct recruit would get. Give the agency your pay scale for the role when you book, not in week eleven. A gap of more than six weeks between bookings resets the clock; a fortnight’s holiday does not. We have written about the twelve week rule in more detail for employers who use agency staff regularly.
Umbrella companies and who carries the tax risk
Some agencies pay temps through an umbrella company rather than their own payroll. Since 6 April 2026 the agency that supplies the worker is jointly and severally liable with the umbrella for any PAYE and National Insurance the umbrella fails to pay. HMRC’s policy paper on tackling non compliance in the umbrella company market sets this out. With no UK agency in the chain the liability sits with the end client, you.
For a small firm using a UK agency the practical point is short. Ask whether the temp will be on the agency’s own PAYE payroll or paid through an umbrella. If it is an umbrella, ask which one and what checks the agency runs on it. An agency that cannot answer in a sentence is telling you something.
What the charge rate covers
The hourly charge you are quoted is not the temp’s pay. It includes their pay, holiday pay, employer’s National Insurance, pension contributions and the agency’s margin. Ask for it broken down, so you can see the temp is paid at least the National Minimum Wage for their age and judge whether the margin is fair. You are invoiced only for the hours on a signed timesheet, so decide now who signs it each week.
The one page briefing
Most bookings that go wrong go wrong on the first morning, usually because nobody expected the temp. Before the start date send the agency a single page: the hours, where to report and to whom, the software they will use, the dress code, parking, and the first task you want done. Set up their email and system logins the day before. Put a named person beside them for the first hour.
A twelve person firm has habits a temp cannot guess, who answers the main line, how the post is logged, which supplier gets chased on a Monday. Ten minutes on that saves a fortnight of small corrections.
Data and confidentiality
An admin temp will see client details, bank information on invoices and staff records. They work under your instruction, so your data protection policies apply to them as they do to your own staff. Have them read it and sign on day one.
Ending the booking
If it is not working, tell the agency, not the temp. The agency handles the conversation and the notice in the terms you signed. If it is working and your administrator is coming back, give the agency a week’s warning so the temp can be placed elsewhere. Good temps remember firms that treated them properly.
Flamingo Workforce supplies temporary and permanent admin staff to small employers across the UK, with vetting done before the first day, weekly invoicing for hours worked and no set up fees. If you have a gap to cover, get in touch and tell us the dates.