SC Help - Have Read Sticky - Letter sent to DVA

[pmeswani]

So verbal contracts and email confirming a start date, is not a form of verbal contract and has no legal bind.....

If that is the case - then yes move on and keep looking (which is what I have done and have applied for several more SC roles).

The Law & Verbal Agreements - Contracts And Agreements (UK) - that was all I was thinking - as both an agreement on the services to be provided and a rate of remuneration had been reached. Ah however - reading on - I kinda think this is classed as an agreement in principle and not an actual agreement.

The question is, what did you verbally agree to? Have you seen the agent's T's & C's before you verbally agreed the contract? If not, then you have deemed to accept their T's and C's.

If you can prove that their T's and C's are invalid, then you have a case against the agent.

By accepting your agent's T's & C's, you have accepted a probable clause in the contract that says that the client are not obligated to provide you with any work.

Rule of thumb, never agree to anything until you have seen the contract and got it reviewed. And if you don't like clauses such as Mutality of Obligation and notice periods, I would suggest reading up on IR35 (albeit close to becoming defunked).

[gingerjedi]

It is entirely possible that the old employer is refusing to let it go, I know some police forces won't transfer in SC or allow it to be transfered out.

[littlejim]

Well you thought wrong, if you had read the sticky as you claim you will see in the fist post it twice mentions your old employer but mistakes are easily rectified.

Your clearance will be held by your last employer, so you should have spoken to them, hopefully this will be resolved quite quickly and the end client will be happy to wait

The client is not happy to wait and the contract has been cancelled because my clearance is "Not Transferred". They were kinda desperate for someone to start ASAP, the role has now been offered to the other candidate as his SC has already been transferred.

I really need to ascertain what that means exactly, is it just a delay and this is just one of those unfortunate things. Or has my clearance expired or is due to expire soon. I think that as the status is Not Transferred that it is either not being or has not been transfered yet.

The first person I phoned yesterday was my old employer, but as the security lady is out until Monday I could not get any sensible answers. That is the only reason I started phoning other agencies, I have quit a permie job to specialise in SC contracting and it looked like this was in jeopardy. She is a single point of failure and when she is not there her work is not covered. This leads me to believe that hopefully the transfer request has not been actioned yet, hence the "Not Transferred" status. If she was out all week and not just Friday, then the transfer request could in all probability not have been processed yet.

[littlejim]

Did you have or did you check that you had any restrictions on your SC? One lad in our office has, we are all SC'd here. His clearance in valid for only two years and and he can't look at certain secure things without supervision.

Very good point.

I am not aware that I had any restrictions and I have not seen a copy to verify the expirary date.

I could work without any restrictions on the secret domains.

The only time I was supervised was when I was working in a Top Secret environment, but this was surely only because I was not DV cleared! I was generally 2 manned at all times when working on TS, but had no restrictions when working on Secret domains.

[littlejim]

The question is, what did you verbally agree to? Have you seen the agent's T's & C's before you verbally agreed the contract? If not, then you have deemed to accept their T's and C's.

If you can prove that their T's and C's are invalid, then you have a case against the agent.

By accepting your agent's T's & C's, you have accepted a probable clause in the contract that says that the client are not obligated to provide you with any work.

Rule of thumb, never agree to anything until you have seen the contract and got it reviewed. And if you don't like clauses such as Mutality of Obligation and notice periods, I would suggest reading up on IR35 (albeit close to becoming defunked).

Thanks for the reply.

I do understand mutality of obligation and IR35 and I can fully appreciate why you would raise this.

I never really had an interest to sue the agency or client, for many reasons this would be the personification of stupidity. You will not get very far if you go around sueing clients and agents. I was just curious as to if these types of contracts are indeed classed as verbal contracts and could potentially be legally binding.

I think it is going off at a tangent to suggest a lawsuit against either the client or agent.

I might have explained it badly, but if the contract is deemed to be a verbal contract and potentially legally binding, are my last employer required to respond to the SC transfer within a reasonable time frame. If they have exceed this which has resulted in me not getting the contract, are they liable for loss of earnings..

I fully understand there may be other complications with my SC, and these will not be clarified until Monday when I talk to the security lady.

But if my old employer did not respond to the SC transfer resquest in a timely manner, and that one action has now lead to me not getting the contract, is there any form of compensation available (from my old employer not from client or agent). I really hope I am explaining this correctly and you see my point.

[pmeswani]

But if my old employer did not respond to the SC transfer resquest in a timely manner, and that one action has now lead to me not getting the contract, is there any form of compensation available (from my old employer not from client or agent). I really hope I am explaining this correctly and you see my point.

If there is any compensation due, then it would be from your previous client / employer and not from the one you were supposed to supply your services to. But you will have to prove mallice from your previous client / employer which deliberately prevented you from obtaining new work.

You will have to ask yourself if it is worth going down the route of compensation. Life is too short and it would be best to move on. If your previous employer / client were preventing you from obtaining future work, not just the one you just lost, then you might have a case, but I would suggest speaking to a lawyer.

[littlejim]

It is entirely possible that the old employer is refusing to let it go, I know some police forces won't transfer in SC or allow it to be transfered out.

My last employer was the MOD in effect - they are classed as a trading organisation, but the SC was MOD SC and the employer was a trading fund of the MOD.

[littlejim]

If there is any compensation due, then it would be from your previous client / employer and not from the one you were supposed to supply your services to. But you will have to prove mallice from your previous client / employer which deliberately prevented you from obtaining new work.

You will have to ask yourself if it is worth going down the route of compensation. Life is too short and it would be best to move on. If your previous employer / client were preventing you from obtaining future work, not just the one you just lost, then you might have a case, but I would suggest speaking to a lawyer.

Thank you for the reply - you are on my thought path totally.

Whilst I do not want to consider compensation literally - I was just curious to know if a case existed.

Can I transfer my SC from my last employer to an independent list X company to save any future complications arising?

[malvolio]

Can I transfer my SC from my last employer to an independent list X company to save any future complications arising?

Er, no. Sad that you are cleared but don't understand the rules regarding clearance. It goes with the role, not the person, so if you don't have a job requiring it, nobody will take you on, List-X or not. In fact, pre-existing clearance is merely an administrative short-cut and you get revetted for every role regardless, the only difference being that for 12 months or so you don't have to do the paperwork. So making a career in SC cleared work is actually not that simple.

It all changed a week or so back anyway. Go read up on Cerberus on the DVA website. In effect, clearance times are now so short there's little point in bouncing people for not being cleared: which will be a wake-up call to quite a few people...

[littlejim]

Er, no. Sad that you are cleared but don't understand the rules regarding clearance. It goes with the role, not the person, so if you don't have a job requiring it, nobody will take you on, List-X or not. In fact, pre-existing clearance is merely an administrative short-cut and you get revetted for every role regardless, the only difference being that for 12 months or so you don't have to do the paperwork. So making a career in SC cleared work is actually not that simple.

It all changed a week or so back anyway. Go read up on Cerberus on the DVA website. In effect, clearance times are now so short there's little point in bouncing people for not being cleared: which will be a wake-up call to quite a few people...

I get the fact it goes with the role and not the person, but if my previous employer is potentially obstructing me from getting work as they do not confirm SC status quickly enough for me to get contracts, is really the issue I am raising. That is the only reason I asked if it could be transferred to another organisation?