You run a desk placing cleaners, porters, caretakers and housekeeping staff into buildings you do not manage. Your worker spends the shift among the client’s staff, tenants, visitors and the public, and nobody from your office is there. From 30 October 2026 that matters more than it did. Third party harassment becomes something a worker can bring a tribunal claim over, against their employer, and for most agency cleaners the Equality Act treats that employer as you, because they contract with you to do the work.
This covers England, Scotland and Wales, where the Equality Act 2010 applies. Northern Ireland has its own equality law. It is general information as the rules stand in October 2026, not legal advice.
What changes on 30 October 2026
Two changes from the Employment Rights Act 2025 take effect that day. The duty employers have carried since October 2024, to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers, becomes a duty to take all reasonable steps. And employers become liable for third party harassment of their workers unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
A third party is anyone the worker deals with at work who is not a colleague: the client’s own staff, customers, tenants, contractors, delivery drivers, members of the public. It is not limited to sexual harassment. It covers harassment related to sex, race, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. One incident is enough. The old rule, repealed in 2013, needed two earlier incidents the employer knew about. There is no such threshold now.
The penalties for the preventative duty stay as they are. A tribunal can raise compensation by up to 25 percent in a successful sexual harassment claim where the duty was breached, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission can take enforcement action. The third party claim is new and stands on its own. Since 6 April 2026 a worker who reports sexual harassment can also be making a protected disclosure under whistleblowing law.
Why third party harassment lands on the agency
The client has its own duties. Under the Equality Act it must not harass contract workers placed with it, and it answers for what its own employees do to them. But from your worker’s side, everyone on that site is a third party: the facilities manager, the office staff, the visitor who corners them in a corridor. If one of them harasses your cleaner and you cannot show you took all reasonable steps, the claim can come to you.
Cleaning and facilities work carries more of this risk than most placements. Shifts start early or finish late. People work alone in empty offices, toilets and changing areas. And on plenty of sites the cleaner is treated as if they are not in the room. None of that is your fault, but all of it goes into what a tribunal would call reasonable.
There are no regulations yet saying what all reasonable steps means. The government expects to consult in 2027. Until then the reference points are the EHRC technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work and its eight step guide for employers. The EHRC has said plainly that an employer is unlikely to show it complied without a risk assessment.
A risk assessment for every site, not one for the business
Do it per site, and keep it short enough that someone will actually update it. Who will your worker meet, at what times, and where will they be alone? Is there a member of the client’s staff on site at 6am, or nobody? Does the site have its own harassment policy, and does it say anything about contractors and agency staff?
The easiest moment to ask is at booking. Add three questions to your order form: who on site handles a complaint, which areas your worker covers alone, and whether the client’s policy applies to people supplied by an agency. Keep the answers with the booking. The sites you visit least are the ones you know least about, so start there.
Put it in your terms with the client
Your terms of business should say that the client applies its harassment policy to your workers, tells you promptly about any complaint involving them, cooperates with your enquiries, and accepts that you can move a worker off site at short notice. Most clients will sign without argument. They have the same duty to their own staff from the same date, and their lawyers are telling them to tighten supplier contracts anyway.
Brief the worker and make reporting easy
Every worker on a new site should know three things before the first shift: what counts as harassment, who to tell, and that reporting it will not cost them hours. Put a number on their induction sheet that someone answers outside office hours, because that is when most of these shifts happen. Write it in plain English and, where it helps, in the worker’s first language.
Be careful how you respond. Pulling a worker off a site after a complaint and leaving them short of shifts can look like victimisation, which is a separate claim. If they want to move, offer a site with the same hours.
Train your consultants and keep the record
Your consultants usually hear about it first, often by text before the office opens. They need to know how to log a complaint, who to escalate it to, and how fast. A short session, repeated for new starters, is worth more than a long policy nobody reads.
Then keep the paper trail: the site risk assessments, the client clauses, the induction sheets, training dates and every complaint with what you did about it. If a claim arrives in 2027 about a shift this winter, that file is your defence.
If you need vetted cleaning and facilities staff for your own sites, see our cleaning and facilities page or get in touch with Flamingo Workforce.