News · Recruitment Agencies & End-Hirers · OPRaaS Platform
Holiday pay compliance has, across much of the temporary labour market, been a private matter between a worker and an employment tribunal. A government consultation now proposes to make it a matter for the state.
The consultation, titled Make Work Pay: holiday pay compliance and enforcement, was opened by the Department for Business and Trade on 30 June 2026 and returned to view this week in legal and payroll commentary. It sets out how the Fair Work Agency would enforce statutory holiday pay from 2027.
According to the consultation, the agency could recover arrears on workers’ behalf, with a proposed enforcement period of six years and penalties of up to 200 per cent of the arrears, capped at £20,000 per worker.
The mechanism is what changes the exposure. Today an underpayment sits until a worker brings a claim. Under the proposal, a single body could investigate across a whole workforce and look back six years. For anyone who hires through agencies and umbrellas, that moves holiday pay from a line rarely questioned to a line that has to be evidenced.
What the holiday pay compliance consultation actually proposes
The consultation is a proposal, not law, and its detail is still open until it closes on 22 September 2026. The direction, though, is clear enough to plan around.
On the Department for Business and Trade’s account, the Fair Work Agency would gain the power to investigate holiday pay underpayments, recover arrears for workers, and issue enforcement notices and financial penalties. The regime described would cover unpaid, underpaid or incorrectly calculated holiday pay, and cases where leave is refused or carry-over is denied. The department frames the approach as supportive first and punitive later, subject to consultation response and secondary legislation.
That last qualifier matters. Commencement dates and powers can move. What is unlikely to move is the direction of travel, because the Fair Work Agency began operating in April 2026 as the single body consolidating minimum wage, agency conduct and modern slavery enforcement, and holiday pay compliance is expressly on its list.
Why state enforcement changes the shape of the risk
Until now, an employer’s holiday pay exposure has been rationed by how many workers go to a tribunal. Few ever do.
State enforcement removes that natural cap. A regulator that can investigate proactively, recover for a whole cohort, and reach back six years is a different order of exposure from a single claim.
The £20,000-per-worker penalty ceiling the consultation suggests applies to the arrears, so the sums scale with the size of the temporary workforce, not with one grievance.
For a recruitment agency placing hundreds of workers, or an end-hirer relying on umbrella payroll, a holiday pay method that is slightly wrong at scale carries the bill upstream once someone with investigatory powers looks. That is the practical meaning of holiday pay compliance shifting from private dispute to public enforcement.
Where holiday pay compliance meets the labour supply chain
Holiday pay looks like a payroll setting. In a contingent workforce it is a supply chain question, because the party that calculates the holiday pay is rarely the party that carries the reputational and commercial risk when it is wrong.
The worked example is rolled-up holiday pay. Since April 2024 it has been lawful again for irregular-hours and part-year workers under the Working Time Regulations 1998. According to the regulations, it must be calculated at 12.07 per cent, paid on top of pay for work done, and itemised separately on the payslip.
Umbrella companies and agencies use rolled-up holiday pay widely. When the rate is folded silently into a headline pay figure rather than shown as a distinct line, the worker cannot see it and neither can an auditor.
This is the assurance gap. The question a regulator would ask is not whether holiday pay was promised, but whether it was calculated correctly and shown clearly on every payslip, and whether the records to prove it still exist. That is a discipline, not a policy statement, and it lives closest to the worker, at the last line of the chain.
The payslip is where holiday pay compliance is proven
If enforcement is coming, the payslip is the document that will settle it. Holiday pay compliance is proven there or nowhere.
This is the territory the OPRaaS Labour Supply Chain Assurance course covers in Module 8, Payslip Verification, under its payslip-auditing topic. The course sets the check plainly: holiday pay should be shown clearly and in compliance with statutory requirements, and where rolled-up holiday pay is used for irregular or part-year workers, it should be itemised and compliant rather than buried in a single figure.
The course also names the record standard the consultation now gives teeth to. It advises that payslips and payroll records are retained in line with legal requirements, typically a minimum of six years. The proposed six-year enforcement window and that six-year retention discipline are the same number for a reason, and an agency or umbrella that keeps only twelve months of payslip detail would struggle to answer a lookback that reaches back six years.
How the OPRaaS Virtual Compliance Director evidences holiday pay compliance
OPRaaS, On-Pay-Roll-as-a-Service, is a systemised governance and workforce management partner for organisations that rely on temporary, contractor and contingent labour. Through the OPRaaS Virtual Compliance Director (OPRaaS VCD) solution we embed senior governance leadership into your business without the cost of a full-time director, building audit-ready controls across IR35, CIS, GLAA, modern slavery and HMRC’s wider labour supply chain expectations, for end-hirers, recruitment agencies, umbrella companies, managed service providers and public sector buyers.
For holiday pay compliance, that discipline is operational rather than abstract. Umbrella and agency payslips are sampled inside the OPRaaS VCD platform to confirm that holiday pay is itemised as a distinct line, calculated to the statutory method, and reconciled against the RTI submissions and Business Tax Account receipts that show what was actually paid.
Exceptions, such as a rolled-up rate folded into gross pay or a missing holiday line, are flagged to the agency and the end-hirer before the next pay run rather than after an enquiry.
The suppliers running that payroll are monitored too. Umbrella companies and labour intermediaries are watched for director and ownership changes at Companies House and for credit-risk changes at Creditsafe, so a provider drifting toward a phoenix or missing-trader pattern is seen before the next payment, not after a strike-off.
This is the discipline the OPRaaS Map, Train, Audit and Evidence platform is built to run. The checks are mapped, the payroll team is trained, each supplier’s payslips are audited against the statutory method, and the audit and evidence summary the OPRaaS VCD platform produces on demand is the record that lets a board own its compliance as an asset rather than reconstruct it under enquiry.
OPRaaS is approved on the UK Government Commercial Agency (formerly Crown Commercial Service) frameworks including RM6310 Audit & Assurance Services (Lots 2 & 4), RM6219 Learning & Training Services DPS, and RM6237 Learning & Training Services DPS.
State enforcement does not create the holiday pay liability; it simply asks whether you can show, payslip by payslip, that the liability was met.
What boards and agencies should check before 2027
The policy detail will move through consultation responses and statutory instruments over the next year, and the exact commencement will be confirmed later. That timetable belongs to government.
The nearer question belongs to any board or agency that pays workers through temporary or umbrella routes, and it is narrower. Can you show, worker by worker, that holiday pay was calculated to the statutory method, itemised on the payslip, and retained for six years? The same question runs across public sector buyers whose agency and umbrella spend sits inside exactly the same rules.
Module 8 of the OPRaaS LSCA course sets out the payslip-verification discipline this calls for, down to the check that holiday pay is shown clearly and calculated to the statutory standard. On holiday pay compliance, enforcement rewards the employer who treated the payslip as evidence all along, and finds out the one who treated it as a formality.
Compliance is your asset. Evidenced daily.
Read next
“Why worker screening standards cannot slip when you hire temporary and agency staff.“
Drawing on the Department for Business and Trade consultation, Make Work Pay: holiday pay compliance and enforcement, published on 30 June 2026, and its accompanying ministerial written statement; the Working Time Regulations 1998; and the OPRaaS LSCA Self-Certification Course Module 8, Payslip Verification.
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This article is editorial commentary by OPRaaS Limited (On-Pay-Roll-as-a-Service), drawing on published government consultation material. It is general information, not legal, tax, employment or compliance advice. Obligations vary by organisation and engagement. Speak to a qualified professional before acting on any specific position.