A West Midlands labour agency illegally employed Romanian workers attempting to pass them off as Hungarian nationals and supplied them to a farm in the Cotswolds.

Foxwell Ltd, of Lye, near Stourbridge, has lost its gangmaster’s licence as a result of this and other licence breaches, including a failure to provide its workers with adequate toilet and first-aid facilities.

Officers from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) discovered that the firm breached 11 different licensing standards in supplying workers to a vegetable farm in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, in all – three of which are defined by the GLA as 'critical'.

Under the Gangmasters Licensing Act, any labour provider supplying workers for agricultural roles requires a licence and must comply with its conditions to protect workers and prevent exploitation.

GLA chief executive, Paul Broadbent, said: “Our investigations revealed that Foxwell avoided any searching questions from the farm about the legality of their Romanian workers by claiming they were Hungarian. By contrast, Foxwell correctly told the GLA they were Romanian, but maintained they were self-employed, which, if true, would exempt them from requiring a work permit.

'From the conversations taking place between the company and our officers, however, it soon became clear that these workers were controlled and supervised at the labour-user site just like any other employee. They were also not allowed to provide a substitute person to perform their role - another known test for self-employment. In fact, the managing director of Foxwell, Mohammad Azeem, was unable to explain how he would carry out an assessment to establish if a worker were self- employed, which was a vital consideration under the circumstances.”

Other issues uncovered by the GLA inspection included: inadequate records of hours worked for calculating workers’ wages; not allowing a worker paid leave to attend ante-natal appointments; having no record of complaints nor any formal procedure in place to handle them; and failing to provide adequate toilet and first aid facilities for field workers.

Notification that Foxwell's licence was to be revoked was sent to Mr Azeem in March.

The company initially lodged an appeal against the decision, but this was subsequently withdrawn. The revocation of the firm’s licence came into effect today on 23 September.

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