The next four years will see employers paying out an additional £23.87 billion due to new employment laws, according to the British Chambers of Commerce.
Reform to the existing pensions legislation will cost companies £4.5 billion a year, the Agency Workers Directive (AWD) will add another £1.5 billion and a further £174 million will be eaten up as employees take advantage of “time off for training”.
The director-general of the BCC, David Frost, pointed out that the coalition says business growth is at the top of its agenda and yet UK companies are going to be hit hard when these new regulations are enacted.
The government promised to cut the regulatory burden and it must make good on this promise.
Frost continued by saying that until the bureaucracy is reduced, the UK will carry on having high unemployment and that could lead to the possibility of the economic recovery becoming derailed.
The AWR is one of many new regulations that is still bamboozling recruitment agencies and employers. APSCo has come to the aid of agencies and their clients by producing a toolkit to help them comply with the Regulations.
This toolkit will be launched in advance of the BIS guidance documents which will be published in the middle of March. There are three sections to the kit. Section one is a short guide, written in plain English, which explains the Regulations. Section two is a risk assessment toolkit for members of APSCo. This will let members identify whether they will be affected by the AWR. The final section is a toolkit that provides the user with a full list of the implementation issues they need to take into consideration when dealing with their clients.
APSCo’s chief executive, Ann Swain, said that the Association’s members are hungry for information about the AWR. The toolkit will be able to sit on a recruiter’s desk and will help keep AWR compliance costs to a minimum.
Although APSCo is working with the BIS on the guidance notes, the Association feels a toolkit which helps recruiters and clients perform quick impact assessments was of significant value.
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