SC Clearance lost due to agency fault - any legal redress?

[SimonMac]

Here are the exact words from the client, I just changed the identifying bits in bold:

Hi,

I’ve confirmed with our vetting team who have verified CYPER’s clearance was never transferred to Client. When this was requested by Agency at the time they were advised that the requestor would need to confirm the clearance transfer however this was not confirmed.

I read this as REQUESTOR (new client from Sept 2017 - Dec 2017) was supposed to ask for clearance to be transferred from Fujitsu but they didn't, this could have been for a variety of reasons, it being a short gig being one possible, but also the fact that if it's a big firm (like Fujistu for example) they might clear more people than they actually need, they might have assumed the role needed SC but in reality it didn't. They are also perfectly capable of putting non-SC people in roles that need SC, either by mistake or a cock up.

Long story short, **** all you an do about it, certainly not the agents fault, not yours either but tulip happens, move on and find your next gig.

[SimonMac]

The 2nd role most definitely needed clearance and the client is blaming the agency for not doing the transfer.
I spoke with the agency and they couldn't give me a valid explanation as to why the transfer was no done, but profusely apologised for this.

Someone clearly messed up as I am 100% certain the 2 companies that I did work for, which the client has a contract with required an SC cleared engineer.

PS. So the client is blaming the agent, and the agent is protecting their customer relation by accepting the blame as it's easier for you to be pissed at the pimp (safe in the knowledge there is **** all that can come back to them except a pissed off contractor), then a break down between pimp and client.

[Lance]

Who is telling lies?

Sounds like they both are.

Computacenter can do the sponsorship themselves, on behalf of their clients. I guess that the guy in CC you talk to is an idiot, and has blamed the agency. And told the agency to agree or he'll be an arse with them.

Unless of course the agency is actually a full on SC sponsor consultancy setup, but that seems unlikely. To be a sponsor they need to be directly engaged with government or defence business or with a large supplier to government or defence. So HP are a sponsor as they look after various government departments and also private companies working in defence.

There's likely a lot more going on anyway as CC's framework agreements with the customers will be complex and the SC requirement will be stated in those.
Some roles will have SC required and others will not. EG. A Unix admin might not need it but a DBA would. Very few of the account managers at CC will understand the full ins and outs of it.

[Anonimouse]

Computacenters vetting department have issues identifying their elbows. They have contractors who have been on two projects for them which both required sc which ran consecutively over an 18 month period, but they are unable to move to project 3 due to clearance issues

[CYPER]

Spoke with someone from Computacenter Vetting Department and was told that they just checked that I had valid clearance, but did not transfer it. I was told I could still work without the clearance being transferred. Is this true?

[northernladuk]

Spoke with someone from Computacenter Vetting Department and was told that they just checked that I had valid clearance, but did not transfer it. I was told I could still work without the clearance being transferred. Is this true?

You can as long as it isn't with delicate information. The problem is if the role required you to deal with that information. I'm not sure the vetting department will know much about the role.

The theory behind what they say could be true in some cases. Question is.. is it in your case? Dunno.

[BlackCountryContractor]

Spoke with someone from Computacenter Vetting Department and was told that they just checked that I had valid clearance, but did not transfer it. I was told I could still work without the clearance being transferred. Is this true?

Hi Cyper

I found personally that to be normal which I mentioned as theory earlier in the thread, transferring takes time and money and some areas of government don't even allow for SCs to be transferred out of their relevant departments due to caveats etc.