Working from European country on UK contract

[eek]

What's the problem here? There are three viable options.

1. You only work with clients that are happy for you to be abroad (plenty of organisations are scared of this).

2. You don't tell your clients where you are based and you take relevant SecOps precautions to make sure nobody finds out.

3. You work with clients in your locale (and accept the reduced rates etc.)

I'm not saying any of these options are right or wrong. I'm saying these are your only options.

2 isn't an option - it's a way to end up with a very expensive professional liability issue or a criminal record...

[ConsultingTechArchitect]

2 isn't an option - it's a way to end up with a very expensive professional liability issue or a criminal record...

That depends on what's written in the contract.

Your average retail or consumer goods client isn't going to be able to claim that you accessing their ERP system from Malaga is a criminal issue when their ERP is SaaS based and hosted in the EEA anyway.

As always, the devil is in the detail.

I've still got two clients in SEA that pay me a retainer to provide support consultants for their manufacturing processes. They are in SEA, I am in EMEA, the support consultants are in Manila. It can work.

[jamesbrown]

What's the problem here? There are three viable options.

1. You only work with clients that are happy for you to be abroad (plenty of organisations are scared of this).

2. You don't tell your clients where you are based and you take relevant SecOps precautions to make sure nobody finds out.

3. You work with clients in your locale (and accept the reduced rates etc.)

I'm not saying any of these options are right or wrong. I'm saying these are your only options.

No, there is one viable option and that is to work directly with end clients on a B2B basis, not via agents and not on contracts that look more like a supply of personal service where the client probably does care who precisely is doing the work and where they are located.

[ConsultingTechArchitect]

No, there is one viable option and that is to work directly with end clients on a B2B basis, not via agents and not on contracts that look more like a supply of personal service where the client probably does care who precisely is doing the work and where they are located.

Well that's provably untrue just by looking at my social circle alone. MY MATE THAT I used to work with is sat in Lisbon working for his cosmetics retail client based in London. They know he's there, they don't care. It's through an agent and is outside IR35.

What you've advised is broadly inline with what I said except you're cutting out the agent that might not be happy that you're abroad. If any party in your contractual chain is unhappy then refer to my three options: do it without them knowing, find an agent that is happy, or only work with people in your locale.....

You can abstractly lump clients and agents into the same bucket here - all must be happy or unaware.

[jamesbrown]

Well that's provably untrue just by looking at my social circle alone. Mate I used to work with is sat in Lisbon working for his cosmetics retail client based in London. They know he's there, they don't care. It's through an agent and is outside IR35.

What you've advised is broadly inline with what I said except you're cutting out the agent that might not be happy that you're abroad. If any party in your contractual chain is unhappy then refer to my three options: do it without them knowing, find an agent that is happy, or only work with people in your locale.....

Stop calling me "mate", I am not your "mate".

This is a 0.1% scenario as everyone in this thread has pointed out. UK agents will not, on the whole, work with overseas contractors and vice versa. As someone who mainly works with overseas clients, I know a few things about working with overseas clients. I have never had an overseas client via an agency, it just doesn't happen, partly because of the type of work they deal with, which is more about resourcing projects with people (i.e., people and locations matter from the start), not about finding suppliers to deliver products or services (i.e., people and locations generally don't matter, except when there is a compliance angle).

[ConsultingTechArchitect]

Stop calling me "mate", I am not your "mate".

This is a 0.1% scenario as everyone in this thread has pointed out. UK agents will not, on the whole, work with overseas contractors and vice versa. As someone who mainly works with overseas clients, I know a few things about working with overseas clients. I have never had an overseas client via an agency, it just doesn't happen, partly because of the type of work they deal with, which is more about resourcing projects with people (i.e., people and locations matter from the start), not about finding suppliers to deliver products or services (i.e., people and locations generally don't matter, except when there is a compliance angle).

I didn't call you mate. I was referring to a mate I used to work with.....

Like I said previously:

You can abstractly lump clients and agents into the same bucket here - all must be happy or unaware.
Everybody in your contractual chain must be happy, or unaware, of the arrangement.

My three options still apply. Agent or client, it's really the same thing.

[eek]

I didn't call you mate. I was referring to a mate I used to work with.....

Like I said previously:

You can abstractly lump clients and agents into the same bucket here - all must be happy or unaware.
Everybody in your contractual chain must be happy, or unaware, of the arrangement.

My three options still apply. Agent or client, it's really the same thing.

And as I pointed out before unware is beyond dangerous and opens up multiple risks were it to be discovered.

As a hint I have contracts which state that data needs to be kept in the UK or listed other countries (Germany because I have servers there).

So if I was using someone and they weren't in the UK I would be beyond annoyed and doing everything I can to pin the blame (and costs) on the person responsible for the data and contract breaches.

[WTFH]

That depends on what's written in the contract.

Your average retail or consumer goods client isn't going to be able to claim that you accessing their ERP system from Malaga is a criminal issue when their ERP is SaaS based and hosted in the EEA anyway.

As always, the devil is in the detail.

I've still got two clients in SEA that pay me a retainer to provide support consultants for their manufacturing processes. They are in SEA, I am in EMEA, the support consultants are in Manila. It can work.

It can work, sure, in some areas of business.
Other areas where it will not work as a lone contractor are ones that involve killing people or keeping them alive, i.e. defence & healthcare.
The clues as to what can and can't be done normally appear when you see the levels of insurance they wasn't evidenced and the amount of checks and certification required to access the systems.

[ConsultingTechArchitect]

And as I pointed out before unware is beyond dangerous and opens up multiple risks were it to be discovered.

As a hint I have contracts which state that data needs to be kept in the UK or listed other countries (Germany because I have servers there).

So if I was using someone and they weren't in the UK I would be beyond annoyed and doing everything I can to pin the blame (and costs) on the person responsible for the data and contract breaches.

Thanks for the hint. What you're referring to is data sovereignty which is a very serious issue. You should not be removing client data to a jurisdiction they are not comfortable with. Data sovereignty has become an even bigger issue since the growth of SaaS and public cloud.

If it wasn't clear, I am not advocating being the cause of a data breach in the same way I am not advocating for my kids to get hit by cars when i tell them to cross the road, I expect them to look first.

Like I said, this depends what's in the contact (and by extension, the client data protection policies).

[northernladuk]

That depends on what's written in the contract.

Your average retail or consumer goods client isn't going to be able to claim that you accessing their ERP system from Malaga is a criminal issue when their ERP is SaaS based and hosted in the EEA anyway.

As always, the devil is in the detail.

I've still got two clients in SEA that pay me a retainer to provide support consultants for their manufacturing processes. They are in SEA, I am in EMEA, the support consultants are in Manila. It can work.

Not really. It's also what's written in the security policies and these things don't exist to find routes around them. If you are doing something that we all know needs to be flagged, i.e. working abroad then not telling them and taking precautions against them finding out is clearly wrong. There are two outcomes, the client 'might' be OK with this (unlikely) or they aren't and it's a big problem. Even if they would have been OK with it not telling them makes it a problem.
Last gig I was working on was at a Gov agency. One of the contractors snuck abroad to work from France but couldn't get back due to covid. Client found out and binned him on the spot. They have a process for requesting to work from abroad which includes a bit of training and logging the kit etc so is perfectly possible but because the contractor did it without telling them he got the can.

The only thing to do in this situation is flag it to them and let them make a risk based decision on it.

Hiding it and avoiding detection is NOT a way to do business with a client. Security isn't an area you can shrug your shoulders and say it isn't in the contract. If you can't tell a client something then you shouldn't be doing it.