The Fair Work Agency has expanded its published enforcement policy to clarify its role in tackling modern slavery and serious labour exploitation, including circumstances where Fraud Act offences may provide an alternative route to prosecution.
The updated policy provides more detail on how the new agency intends to use its combined labour-market powers after the consolidation of responsibilities previously spread across several enforcement bodies.
The Fair Work Agency now explicitly states that it has a role in protecting vulnerable and exploited workers under sections 1 and 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
It also confirms that serious labour exploitation which does not reach the legal threshold for a modern-slavery offence may still involve conduct capable of investigation or prosecution under the Fraud Act 2006.
The distinction broadens the range of existing legal tools available where exploitation involves deception or dishonest conduct but prosecutors cannot establish every element required for a slavery or forced-labour charge.
The change is an enforcement clarification rather than the creation of a new criminal offence.
Modern-slavery powers within the agency’s direct remit apply in England and Wales because the relevant criminal-law frameworks differ in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The agency can work with police, local authorities, and other enforcement bodies where serious exploitation crosses institutional or geographic boundaries.
The Fair Work Agency has been established to bring together enforcement across areas including minimum-wage compliance, employment agencies and employment businesses, gangmasters licensing, and serious labour exploitation.
Further responsibilities are expected to follow. Statutory holiday-pay enforcement is due to become part of the agency’s work from 2027, subject to implementation arrangements, broadening the regulator’s visibility across employment practices.
A unified structure changes compliance risk for employers because problems uncovered in one area can be considered alongside evidence from another. Wage records, recruitment arrangements, deductions, worker documentation, accommodation, labour-provider relationships, and indicators of coercion may form part of the same investigation.
That is particularly relevant in sectors with long or complex labour supply chains. Agriculture, food processing, logistics, construction, hospitality, care, and temporary staffing frequently involve intermediaries between the worker and the organisation ultimately benefiting from the labour.
Those structures are legitimate and widespread, but they can make accountability difficult to trace where agencies, subcontractors, umbrella companies, labour providers, and end clients each control different aspects of recruitment, pay, or working conditions.
The Fraud Act clarification adds another reason for organisations to understand what happens deeper within those arrangements. A contractual clause requiring a supplier to comply with employment law may provide limited protection if an employer has ignored evidence that workers are being recruited or paid improperly.
Evidence and due diligence therefore become important operational controls. Organisations using outsourced or temporary labour need visibility over recruitment fees, wage deductions, working hours, accommodation arrangements, right-to-work processes, and changes in labour-provider ownership or management.
The agency has also presented employer guidance and digital tools as part of its wider operating model. The intention is to simplify compliance for legitimate employers while directing investigative resources towards deliberate or serious breaches.
Bringing multiple enforcement functions together could also make repeated patterns easier to identify. Complaints involving the same labour provider across several sites, sectors, or clients can be harder to recognise when information is held by separate regulators.
A single agency does not remove the legal boundaries between different offences, jurisdictions, and enforcement bodies. Whether a case proceeds under employment law, licensing rules, fraud legislation, modern-slavery law, or another route will still depend on the evidence and statutory tests.
The policy update instead clarifies the breadth of the toolkit available when serious exploitation does not fit comfortably into one category.
That wider view will become increasingly significant as further employment-rights responsibilities transfer into the Fair Work Agency. Employers operating large, outsourced, or distributed workforces will increasingly face a regulator able to examine labour-market compliance across several connected dimensions rather than through separate institutional windows.
The practical effect will depend on how frequently those powers are used and how enforcement priorities develop, but the direction is clear: serious worker exploitation can attract scrutiny even where the evidence does not produce a modern-slavery charge.
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