The Fair Work Agency: What It Means for Contractor Rights

The Fair Work Agency and what it means for contractor rights

If you are a limited-company contractor, you have probably seen references to the new Fair Work Agency (FWA) and wondered whether it changes anything about your IR35 status or your day-to-day contracting. It is worth being clear from the outset: the FWA is an employment-rights enforcement body, not an IR35 status regulator. This post explains what it actually does, and where the boundaries lie.

What is the Fair Work Agency?

The Fair Work Agency launched on 7 April 2026 as the UK government's new labour-market enforcement body, bringing together several existing employment-rights enforcement functions under one roof. It is an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade, and does not have a distinct legal identity of its own. The Employment Rights Act 2025 gives the Secretary of State the underlying functions to enforce certain employment legislation, which the FWA then delivers. See the Fair Work Agency's GOV.UK organisation page and the About us page for the official framing.

According to the Employment Rights Act 2025 factsheet, the aim is to consolidate enforcement so that workers and businesses deal with a single, better-resourced agency rather than several separate bodies.

What does the FWA actually enforce?

The FWA's published remit is specific, and it is worth listing because it is easy to assume "employment rights" means something broader than it does. According to the enforcement policy statement and the enforcement statement, the FWA is responsible for:

• Enforcing the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage
• Regulating employment agencies and employment businesses operating in England, Scotland and Wales, including under the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003
• Licensing labour suppliers in the agriculture and food sectors (the gangmaster licensing function)
• Acting against serious labour exploitation and abuse

Government guidance describes the FWA as supporting fair competition and helping employers comply with the law, and says it will work closely with Acas. See the Fair Work Agency organisation page for that framing.

One transitional point worth noting for anyone dealing with minimum wage queries: the FWA delivery plan for 2026 to 2027 confirms that HMRC continues to deliver National Minimum Wage enforcement under contract until full transfer to the FWA from April 2027. So during this transition period, HMRC remains involved in that specific function even as the FWA brand becomes the public face of labour-market enforcement.

Why this matters if you work through an agency

A meaningful chunk of the FWA's remit concerns recruitment and staffing businesses, which is directly relevant to contractors who are placed via an agency rather than contracting directly with the end client. If you have a dispute with a recruitment agency, for example around unpaid fees, unlawful deductions, or breaches of the conduct regulations, government guidance sets out how to make a complaint to the Fair Work Agency about your recruitment agency.

Contact details are published on the Contact the Fair Work Agency page, including an email address (contact@fairworkagency.gov.uk) and a phone line (0345 161 6000). These guidance pages were last updated in late August and early September 2026, so it is worth checking GOV.UK directly for the most current position before relying on any summary, including this one.

What the FWA does not do: IR35 status

This is the point most relevant to this site's readers. Nothing in the FWA's published remit describes it as determining IR35 status, issuing status determinations, or providing any form of outside-IR35 clearance. The FWA's stated functions sit in employment-rights enforcement: minimum wage, agency conduct, gangmaster licensing and labour exploitation. IR35 status remains a separate matter entirely, governed by the off-payroll working rules, and it is decided by the end client through a Status Determination Statement (SDS), not by any enforcement agency.

So if a job listing states that a contract is "outside IR35", that is the client's own claim about how they have assessed the engagement, typically based on factors such as substitution rights and the degree of control exercised over how, when and where the work is done (the kind of reasoning courts have applied in cases like PGMOL). It is not, and cannot be, a status confirmed by this platform, by the FWA, or by any other third party. A CEST tool result, where one has been used, is not determinative of status either, a position HMRC itself has confirmed; an SDS or contract review provided by the client is evidence of how they reached their conclusion, not proof of the correct outcome.

Employment rights versus IR35 status: two different questions

It helps to keep these two things mentally separate:

• Employment rights enforcement (the FWA's job) concerns whether agencies, employers and labour suppliers comply with minimum wage law, agency conduct rules and protections against exploitation.
• IR35 status (not the FWA's job) concerns whether an engagement should be taxed as employment or self-employment under the off-payroll working rules, based on the actual working practices between contractor and client.

A contractor could, in principle, have a wholly compliant agency relationship from an employment-rights perspective while still having an IR35 status that needs proper scrutiny, or vice versa. They are assessed under different legislation, by different mechanisms, and neither one settles the other.

Where to go for help

If you believe an agency has breached employment-rights rules, the Fair Work Agency's contact page and its complaints guidance are the right starting points. If your question is instead about how your own contract or working practices might be assessed for IR35 purposes, that is a job for a qualified IR35 contract reviewer or a contractor accountant, since status is fact-specific and depends on the real working arrangement, not just the paperwork.

For contractors weighing up new engagements, you can browse outside-IR35 contracts as listed by clients, or check current day-rate benchmarks to see how rates compare across sectors.

This platform does not determine, verify, or warrant IR35 status; the SDS is the client's legal responsibility. Contractors should take their own advice and consider IR35 insurance.