ESM2060 | Agency and temporary workers: agency legislation - provisions from 6 April 2014: supervision, direction or control example - joiner / carpenter

Part 2, Chapter 7 Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, Part 2, Chapter 7, section 44(2)(a)

Social Security (Categorisation of Earners) Regulations 1978, Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 2

Joiner / carpenter

John is a joiner and carpenter who usually works on small scale construction jobs. John obtains his work through an employment business which finds him regular work with clients. A construction company contact the employment business at short notice and ask for a joiner/carpenter to assist them for two weeks on a refurbishment contract they are undertaking on the interior of a church. The employment business contact John and provide him with the contact number for Steve (the project manager). John phones Steve and, after discussion, John accepts the assignment. Steve tells John to arrive on site at 9am the following Monday.

During his initial contact with Steve, John was told the construction project entailed installing washroom and kitchen facilities in a church and the work that John was being engaged to undertake was to build an oak panelled door for the washroom and then hang it in place.

John turns up for work on his first day and meets Steve who gives John the design specifications for the door and then Steve tells John he is free to build it whichever way he chooses, during which time he will have no interference from anyone. It is entirely up to John to decide how and where he will build the door (i.e. on site or at home in his workshop). Steve tells John his only requirements are that the door is built to specification and hung in place within the next two weeks of John’s engagement and that John contacts Steve if there are any problems/delays.

John finishes the door and it is ready and hung in place by day thirteen. Pleased with his John’s work, Steve asks him if he would mind laying some new wood flooring in the church for his last day of the originally agreed two week job, instead of ending the engagement a day early. John is told that if he is willing to do this work he will be finishing off the flooring which another worker had almost completed and as with John’s previous work, he will be left to get on with this work without involvement from anyone. John agrees to lay the flooring and is shown where the floorboards are stored and where the flooring is to be laid. He is then left to complete laying the flooring without anyone overseeing him or providing him with instructions. He completes this job after two hours and having told Steve the flooring is now laid, John then leaves the site to go home. His work on this engagement has now ended.

In this scenario, it was made clear to John at the very outset that he was being engaged to build and hang a door in place which must be done within his two week engagement. John was then left to get on with building the door as he saw fit, in the knowledge that nobody would be overseeing him, or stepping in to dictate how John made and hung the door in place. Having built and hung the door in place, Steve then asked John if he would mind doing some additional work, laying wood flooring on his last day which John agreed to.

John was told from the outset that nobody would (or would have a right to) subject him to supervision, direction, or control over the manner of his work. Instead, John was free to choose how he did that work. John was moved tasks during the two week engagement but had the genuine opportunity to turn this down and end the engagement early. The agency legislation will not therefore apply to this scenario.