The Agency Checked Them. But Did They Check the Right Person?
agency workers in the UK
liability between agency and hirer
to verify with Certifyd
The reality of agency worker compliance in the UK.
Agency worker compliance with Certifyd closes the gap between agency onboarding and client-site arrival. Agencies verify workers at registration, but there is no standard mechanism to confirm that the person who arrives at the client’s premises is the same person who was verified. Certifyd’s bi-directional, device-bound authentication provides that confirmation: the worker’s identity is cryptographically verified through their registered device at each assignment, their active agency membership is confirmed in real time, and a tamper-proof record is created for both the agency and the hiring employer.
Over 1.2 million people in the UK work through employment agencies. The legal framework creates joint liability: under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, both the agency and the hiring business can face penalties if an illegal worker is placed. The hiring business cannot simply rely on the agency having conducted the checks — they must satisfy themselves that the worker has the right to work in the UK.
The practical challenge is that agencies verify at onboarding, and hirers verify at the point of assignment — but neither can confirm that the person at the site is the person who was checked. Workers share documents, substitutions happen, and the gap between the checked identity and the working identity goes undetected until an enforcement action reveals it.
The Fair Work Agency (from April 2026) will be able to inspect both agencies and hiring businesses simultaneously. When the FWA asks the hirer ‘Who verified this person?’ and the hirer says ‘The agency did,’ the FWA can then ask the agency ‘How do you know the person at this site is the person you verified?’ Neither has a satisfactory answer without real-time identity verification. Certifyd provides that answer: device-bound, cryptographic proof that the person at the site is the person who was verified.
This is broken.
Here's why.
Agencies verify at onboarding; hirers rely on that check for months or years of subsequent assignments.
The person who arrives at the site may not be the person the agency verified — substitutions go undetected.
Joint liability means both agency and hirer face £60,000 penalties per illegal worker.
The Fair Work Agency will inspect both ends of the chain and expect evidence at both.
Simple verification.
Every time.
Agency registers workers on Certifyd during onboarding, linking identity to their device
Hiring business requests verification at the point of each assignment
Worker verifies through Certifyd at the client site — confirming identity, agency membership, and right-to-work status
Both agency and hirer receive tamper-proof verification records for the same event
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“At £50–200 per background check, we were spending thousands a year just to verify temps. Some checks got skipped. That’s the reality for millions of small businesses.”— Director, temp staffing agency
Common questions.
Both. Under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, the agency that placed the worker and the business that hired them share liability. If a worker is found to be illegal, both can face civil penalties of up to £60,000. The hirer cannot simply rely on the agency having done the check — they have an independent duty to verify. Certifyd creates verification records that both parties can use to demonstrate compliance.
The agency verifies the worker’s identity at onboarding through Certifyd, binding their identity to their device. At each subsequent assignment, the worker re-verifies at the client site through the same device-bound identity. Both the agency and the hirer receive a tamper-proof verification record confirming that the person at the site is the person the agency verified. This closes the gap between onboarding verification and assignment-level compliance.
A worker’s Certifyd identity is theirs — it’s bound to their device, not to any single agency. They can hold memberships with multiple agencies simultaneously. When they verify at a client site, the record shows which agency dispatched them for that specific assignment. Each agency manages its own membership independently, but the underlying identity is consistent across all of them.
Substitutions are where the compliance gap is widest. An agency books Worker A, but Worker B arrives. Without real-time verification, the hirer may not notice the difference. With Certifyd, the worker who arrives must verify through their own device-bound identity. If Worker B arrives instead of Worker A, the verification record will show Worker B’s identity — immediately alerting the hirer to the substitution and creating an accurate record of who actually worked.
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Read: The Temp Worker Loophole