Just been sent this

[BoredBloke]

Spring Technology / Hyphen have an urgent and exciting opportunity for a Data & Quality Analyst to join us an Employed Consultant to work on our client site based in Bristol.

Salary: Competitive + below benefits

As an Employed Consultant you will receive a fixed permanent salary, annual bonus plan, holiday and sick pay plus a number of additional benefits.
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This great opportunity is being offered on a PAYE basis which means a LTD/Umbrella company cannot be used.


So this is a case of the lack of job security of being a contractor, with a few of the nice parts of being a permie. Contractors forced to go PAYE....is this how they are going to get around the IR35 public sector thing then?

[cojak]

Possibly, if the client is a government quango like the Environment Agency.

[Gentile]

There are some absolutely insane proposals out there in contraktorland at the moment. I saw one the other day looking for a SharePoint developer in Glasgow. It seemed like an average rate (round about £300 per day for a twelve month contract in a Public Sector organisation), up until you realised that it was a twelve month contract.........where you were only required two days a week. Hmmm.

Another one I saw was looking for a Lead .Net Developer for £15 per hour. No, you didn't mishear me: an experienced team lead in a #1 sought skill on a contract basis for three months at ~£27k pro rata. You couldn't get a junior permie developer for that.

The "working for an agency as a PAYE employee, but on a client site" is a new one on me, though.

[BoredBloke]

The "working for an agency as a PAYE employee, but on a client site" is a new one on me, though.

To be honest when IR35 was first mooted, this is what I said would happen. No risk for the end client and an agency in the middle paying tons of PAYE but with the added benefit of a hugely inflated margin

[northernladuk]

They were putting people into Barclays with the same setup a couple of years ago. Thought it was a bit cheeky at the time as they were placing contractors as well (I think it was these guys, or it could have been Hays. I forget but anyway). It seemed like they were keeping the contractor rate for themselves and putting people the employed in. I could be wrong and they had a different rate/agreement for these people.

Anyhow, the upshot is, when the piece of work was finished the person had to go in to the Altincham office 'on the bench' and look for work. They kept them for a month on the bench and then got rid. I am sure if you really wanted to push this hard with an employment tribunal they would come worse off as it was just hire and fire for specific pieces of work but I am sure they had it checked legally. Even so it seemed to be pushing a fine line. Again I can't remember how they got rid though. I guess they could claim redundancy as the role no longer existed but it didn't seem right. They knew the position they were putting people in was short term with no chance of work after.

Very poor carry on IMO.

[craig1]

The "working for an agency as a PAYE employee, but on a client site" is a new one on me, though.

This "employed consultant" crap has been around for ages now. The agencies who use it get into client sites promising near off-shore rates for contractors on-site then farm out the jobs to contractors at not much above permie rates with contractor security. They then get sole supplier status for contractors because of their "value for money". They then pocket a far greater margin than they'd get being just a PSL agency putting in occasional contractors.

It's also nowhere near just public sector, my most common occurrence of it is in the private sector outside of London. The agencies that peddle this stuff seem to have taken the hint as I've not been contacted by them for months now but I hear about it enough from some of my friends to know that it's still going on.

I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to want to go for that model. There must be plenty of desperate people out there though as they're obviously getting enough people in to make the model worth persisting with.

[Gentile]

To be honest when IR35 was first mooted, this is what I said would happen. No risk for the end client and an agency in the middle paying tons of PAYE but with the added benefit of a hugely inflated margin

Except of course for the risk of being told to take a hike, and finding themselves having to pay even higher fees in the name of mitigating risk when enough contractors have told them to take a running jump and they need to sheepishly go back to the people they tried to lowball first time around and make them a proper offer. There's always a cost to being cheap that tends to exceed the cost you were trying to avoid. That's why banks have to pay double: they've messed too many contractors around too often to be able to pay the same rate as normal clients.

[stek]

Has my post gone then?

[Gentile]

This "employed consultant" crap has been around for ages now. The agencies who use it get into client sites promising near off-shore rates for contractors on-site then farm out the jobs to contractors at not much above permie rates with contractor security. They then get sole supplier status for contractors because of their "value for money". They then pocket a far greater margin than they'd get being just a PSL agency putting in occasional contractors.

It's also nowhere near just public sector, my most common occurrence of it is in the private sector outside of London. The agencies that peddle this stuff seem to have taken the hint as I've not been contacted by them for months now but I hear about it enough from some of my friends to know that it's still going on.

I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to want to go for that model. There must be plenty of desperate people out there though as they're obviously getting enough people in to make the model worth persisting with.

I've only seen 'consultancies' like Sopra and Tek Systems try it on this blatantly, rather than more traditional Agencies. It's a new one on me for an organisation that ordinarily places individual contractors under their own Ltd or brolly to instead presume to 'employ' them and pocket the contract fees instead. I guess the economy must really just be in that much of a mess.

[craig1]

I've only seen 'consultancies' like Sopra and Tek Systems try it on this blatantly, rather than more traditional Agencies. It's a new one on me for an organisation that ordinarily places individual contractors under their own Ltd or brolly to instead presume to 'employ' them and pocket the contract fees instead. I guess the economy must really just be in that much of a mess.

The first time Spring/Computer People got in touch with me about this type of employed consultant role must have been 2009 for a well known Norwich company. They were offering £50k for a 6 month contract for a top end project manager. By the time I factored in my costs, PAYE status, etc then it just wasn't worth my time even thinking about it beyond saying "no".