What counts as a qualifying week
A qualifying week is a calendar week in which the worker did any work in the same role for the same hirer. Counting from a placement start date instead overstates the position for anyone who has had a quiet fortnight, and understating it is worse: the week 12 cost arrives unpriced.
The clock reads the timesheet weeks that actually exist, so it moves when work happens rather than when a calendar says it should.
What breaks it
Under regulation 7(8), a break of more than six calendar weeks between assignments in the same role resets the clock. Shorter gaps do not. The product applies the statutory break rather than a house rule, and the week 10 warning is the point of the whole thing: it gives an agency two weeks of notice on a cost.
Absences that pause, and absences that accrue
Not every missed week is an ordinary gap. The regulations treat some absences as pausing the clock, so the break does not run, and some as continuing to accrue towards the twelve.
- Accrue: pregnancy and maternity, and family leave. Those weeks join the counted set.
- Pause: sickness, jury service, a shutdown, industrial action. The clock holds rather than resets.
- Ordinary gap: anything else, which is where the six-week break rule applies.
Why this is worth getting right
Hand-counting resets the clock a week early often enough that it is the standard finding. A worker who reaches week 12 without anybody noticing is an equal-treatment claim; a worker whose clock was wrongly reset is a claim too. The guide sets out the rule.
A clock with weeks behind it
The demo agency has a placement at week 10 of 12. Open it and look at what is counted, and what is not.