Insights

What’s changing in workforce compliance, explained plainly.

Short, factual pieces on the regulatory changes behind our portfolio — sourced from primary legislation and official guidance, not legal advice.

26 August 2026

The UK's new automated decision-making regime, explained

Since 5 February 2026, UK law on automated decisions has changed substantially. Here is what actually changed, and why the absence of finished guidance is not a reason to wait.

12 August 2026

The statutory excuse: the most important legal concept most employers have never read properly

Doing a right-to-work check and establishing a statutory excuse are not the same thing. The difference between the two is, at current rates, up to £60,000.

29 July 2026

‘Meaningful human review’: what the law actually requires

Article 22C's safeguard sounds simple. In practice, the test for whether a human reviewer counts is narrower than most organisations assume.

15 July 2026

1 October 2026: why flexible labour is no longer outside the right-to-work perimeter

The right-to-work regime has always applied to employees. From 1 October 2026, it applies to almost everyone else too.

1 July 2026

When automated decisions touch sensitive data, the rules get stricter

Health, biometric, and similarly sensitive data face a narrower set of lawful bases for automated decision-making than ordinary personal data does.

17 June 2026

Why the first right-to-work check is never the last one

A correctly completed initial check on a worker with time-limited permission starts a clock. Missing the follow-up ends the statutory excuse retrospectively, with no cure.

3 June 2026

What the ICO's Recruitment Rewired report actually found

The regulator engaged directly with recruitment-sector employers and found a consistent gap between what businesses believed about their own use of automation and what was actually happening.

20 May 2026

Why selective right-to-work checks are discrimination, not caution

Applying right-to-work checks only to workers who look or sound foreign is direct racial discrimination under the Equality Act — regardless of intent.

6 May 2026

How the ICO actually calculates the £17.5 million penalty

The headline maximum penalty figure gets quoted constantly. The regulator's own methodology for reaching an actual number is quoted far less often.

22 April 2026

The mitigating factors that turn a fine into a warning notice

The right-to-work civil penalty regime is graduated, not flat. Three specific, documented factors decide whether a first breach costs £45,000 or nothing at all.

8 April 2026

Compliance is not red tape — it is the cost of competing fairly

The employer that skips a right-to-work check does not just risk a fine. It gains a cost advantage over every competitor that checks properly.