What the law asks
Regulation 13A of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 requires an employment business to give a work-seeker a Key Information Document before agreeing terms with them. It has to state who is paying them, the type of contract, the minimum rate they can expect, deductions, holiday entitlement, and any fees or benefits.
The guide covers the rule itself in more depth.
Generated, not filled in
A KID is produced from the placement: the engagement type, the umbrella company where there is one, the pay rate and unit, and the agency issuing it. Nobody retypes a rate onto a statutory document, which is where the usual discrepancy between the file copy and the record comes from.
Issuing writes an audit event, so the date it was issued is evidence rather than a memory. That date is the thing an inspector asks about, because the duty is about timing as much as content.
Umbrella engagements
Where a placement runs through an umbrella company, the KID has to say so, and the umbrella has to be named. The product refuses to open an umbrella placement without one, so a KID cannot be issued that is silent about who is actually paying the worker.
What changes when the rules change
The thresholds and content requirements the document is built against ship as dated rule packs rather than as code. When regulation 13A is amended, and Make Work Pay has it in scope, the change arrives with its effective date and its source, and documents issued before that date keep the rules they were issued under.
Where it goes
The issued document lands on the worker's own portal alongside the rest of their paperwork, and in the evidence pack for the placement. It is served as an attachment rather than as a page, so an uploaded file can never run script from this origin.
A document with its record behind it
Issue a KID on a demo placement and then open the evidence pack: the document, the date, and the chain it sits on.