If your business uses temporary labour, you should now be taking steps to ensure that you don’t suffer any disruption once the gangmaster licensing arrangements are implemented over the next few months.

As you should now be aware, from October 1 it will be a criminal offence to provide labour to the agriculture, horticulture, food processing and packing sectors without a licence.

The Gangmaster Licensing Authority recommends that labour providers apply for a licence by September 1 to allow four weeks for processing the application.

To date, about 560 labour providers have applied for or have been awarded a licence. The total number of labour providers across the country is estimated at about 1,000.

The current licence status of individual labour providers can be checked on the register at the GLA website: visit http://www.gla.gov.uk

The maximum penalty for using an unlicensed labour provider is a prison sentence of 51 weeks and a fine. To establish a defence in case of prosecution, labour users will have to be able to show that they have taken reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the gangmaster was acting under the authority of a licence.

A consultation is currently underway regarding the steps a labour user can be expected to take to check that a labour provider is licensed (see FPC Newsletter 03/07/06). We would be delighted to hear your views.