PS changes April 2017 - caught or not?

[gisajob]

Hi everyone. Looking for some opinion on whether I am likely to be caught be the proposed PS changes coming in next year.

Situation is as follows: I am a Ltd Co. contractor, working (at the moment) on a large, Government funded infrastructure project. The end client is a subsidiary company of TFL and therefore subject to the FOIA (which I believe will be the determining factor on whether the changes need to apply).

My contract however is with a large, private, multidisciplinary engineering company. I am contracted to provide services to this company, but working on the specific infrastructure project.

The contract chain is: My Ltd -- agency -- engineering client -- end client

I'm confused as to whether I would be affected as I don't have a direct contract with the end client but I am providing services working on a PS project. I am also posted (again, at the moment) in the end clients central project office. There are guys here doing a similar role to me who do have a direct contract with the end client who presumably will be affected.

Another layer of confusion comes from the fact that I could feasibly be moved back to my engineering client's home office to finish the last few months of the contract. This would mean sitting alongside other guys doing the same job as me but on non-public sector projects. So potentially I could be caught but as it stands they wouldn't as their project would not be in the firing line?

[eek]

Truthly answer we don't know - especially with that 3rd party engineering client involved

What we do know is that everything is designed to make the public sector and agencies who recruit for them put people inside. Unless things seriously change there is no incentive for them to argue the other way.

[gisajob]

Without wishing to be too optimistic I would hope that they won't/don't apply to me in this role. The end client has no idea who I am or what I do (other than to give me a desk, security pass and log-in to their system), never mind whether I am contract or permanent. My client (the engineering company) are contracted to complete seperate contracts/portions of the overall project. I don't believe they charge out individually for me, rather they cost a portion of their contract and charge for it (using a mixture of permanent and contract staff, all performing different roles/jobs). I am only here in the central project office as it's more cost effective to pay for this desk space than it is for my client to charge the end client for use of their office space.

It's all very complicated!

I have raised my concerns with my agent and they don't feel it will be an issue (as best as they can tell, which is probably a guess!).

Interestingly I have had similar conversations with other agents over the past 6 months and I'm surprised how little some know about the whole situation. I have actually been asked by a couple to forward information/links to articles as they knew absolutely nothing about the changes.

[fool]

Without wishing to be too optimistic I would hope that they won't/don't apply to me in this role. The end client has no idea who I am or what I do (other than to give me a desk, security pass and log-in to their system), never mind whether I am contract or permanent. My client (the engineering company) are contracted to complete seperate contracts/portions of the overall project. I don't believe they charge out individually for me, rather they cost a portion of their contract and charge for it (using a mixture of permanent and contract staff, all performing different roles/jobs). I am only here in the central project office as it's more cost effective to pay for this desk space than it is for my client to charge the end client for use of their office space.

It's all very complicated!

I have raised my concerns with my agent and they don't feel it will be an issue (as best as they can tell, which is probably a guess!).

Interestingly I have had similar conversations with other agents over the past 6 months and I'm surprised how little some know about the whole situation. I have actually been asked by a couple to forward information/links to articles as they knew absolutely nothing about the changes.

Your average agent doesn't actually deal with the businesses, they just find faces with assigned day rates and pass them onto an account manager.

Even if the account managers are somewhat aware, these things aren't offical until they're offical and theres no need for them to scare you off right now. I do work for the public sector right now, but I don't really feel the need to go anywhere until this comes into force.

Whether or not you need to move earlier than that depends on how you think you match up against the competition. Most public sector workers are content spending two years delivering a basic crud app, I'm not worried about them.

[westtester]

I was working for UKHO and under the auspices of the MoD, they have already implemented an 'inside-IR35' approach for all contractors. It got announced to the agencies on the same day as the contractors were told so no time given to prepare. However, unlike the proposal which puts the onus of proof on the agency, this is a blanket requirement that you are inside IR35 regardless.

In your case I would imagine that the HR department will start to seek assurance from the agency on April 2017 that IR35 compliance is being met, assuming the proposal is implemented as expected. It might all change before then of course, but personally I'd stay well away from any PS engagements until this whole mess is sorted out.

[gables]

The way I would view this, given the info so far known with the rules, is the PS rules shouldn't apply as you're contracted to a private client. However, IR35 might still apply for the 'normal' reasons.