The obligation
Regulation 13A of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 reg 13A requires an employment business to give each agency work-seeker a Key Information Document before terms are agreed. The point of it is transparency about pay: who employs the worker, what chain the money travels through, and what deductions stand between the rate and their pocket.
The timing is the sharp edge. A perfectly drafted KID issued a week after the worker started fails the regulation; the document exists to inform the decision to sign, not to decorate the file afterwards.
What it must show
Regulation 13A(3) prescribes the content, and the gov.uk guidance repeats it. For a worker the agency pays, or one supplying services through a company they control:
- The title, and who to complain to: the document says what it is, where further information lives, and how to reach the Fair Work Agency (the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate before 7 April 2026).
- The type of contract: employment, apprenticeship or a contract for services.
- The employment business and who pays, which differs by engagement: the agency’s own payroll, an umbrella, or the worker’s own limited company.
- The rate and the payment intervals.
- Deductions required by law, and the nature and amount (or method) of any other deductions and any fees.
- Non-monetary benefits, and holiday entitlement and holiday pay.
- A representative example in figures: gross, each deduction, net.
Where an umbrella or other intermediary pays the worker, regulation 13A(6) adds the umbrella’s identity, both rates (what the agency pays the umbrella and what the umbrella pays the worker), the connections between the parties, what comes off the assignment rate before pay is calculated, why the two rates differ, and an example that reconciles them line by line.
Documents should fall out of records
Most of what a KID states is already a fact the back office holds: the placement’s engagement type, the umbrella if there is one, the rate, the chain. The rest (the contract type, the interval, holiday, deductions, the umbrella’s illustration) is stated once against the placement and relied on under regulation 13A(7). Generating the document from those facts means it cannot drift from reality, the issuing act is stamped against the placement, a placement without one is visible instead of silent, and a rate change under an issued document flags it as out of date.
BookKept generates the KID from the placement itself
One click on a placement produces its Key Information Document from the record’s own facts, in the shape regulation 13A(3) or 13A(6) prescribes for that engagement, with the representative example in figures. It refuses to issue while a prescribed fact is missing and names the gap. It stamps the issue against the placement, files the document with a retention category, and puts it on the worker’s own portal page. A placement missing its KID, or holding one that a later change has made out of date, says so on the compliance screen, and the reg 21 assignment confirmation rides the same machinery.