Compliance is not a folder, it is a floor

When a home asks an agency "are your workers compliant?", the honest answer has two halves. There is what the law requires, which every agency must do, and there is what a well-run agency chooses to do on top. The gap between the two is where quality actually lives.

The legal floor is real and specific. An employment business must confirm identity and right to work before it supplies anyone. For work with vulnerable people it must obtain the worker's qualifications and take all reasonably practicable steps to confirm suitability, and if it cannot get a document it has to tell you so. It must pass you the information it holds and confirm in writing that the worker is willing to do the job. That is not best practice, it is the Conduct Regulations 2003.

Above that floor sit the choices. Is medication competency signed off by an assessor watching the worker, or by an online certificate? Who looks at a DBS disclosure and decides, and is that decision written down? How often is a nurse's NMC registration rechecked, once at sign-up or every few months? What happens the day a safeguarding certificate expires, does the worker quietly stay on the offer list or drop off it automatically?

We have set out the floor, the standard checks that belong above it, and the exact evidence you are entitled to ask any agency for. One caution worth repeating: an agency that supplies staff is an employment business, not a CQC-registered provider, so treat "we are CQC registered" from a staffing agency as a reason to ask more questions, not fewer. Open the guide, agency compliance, what good looks like.

This article is general commentary from our own experience running a healthcare staffing agency. It is not legal advice.