Earlier this year farming saw the successful legal challenge in the Court of Appeal of a case regarding the use of polytunnels. Now farmers across the country have received news on another topic - HM Revenue & Customs is doubling the number of officers who investigate labour providers, to ensure that they are paying their taxes.
Farming and growing is not easy, and farmers with polytunnels seem to have faced a real up-hill struggle over the years. The Wye Valley case concerned planning issues and matters relating to the erection and use of polytunnels, but for farmers growing crops which need intensive care and work at seasonal times of year, not only are polytunnels often an issue, but labour can cause real problems too.
It is obvious that the need for intensive labour will occur at certain times of the year and for relatively short periods of time, for example soft fruit growing. Farmers growing crops of this nature will often use seasonal workers supplied by ‘labour providers’ or ‘gangmasters’ as they are commonly known in order to recruit in such numbers for such labour intensive work for so short a period of time.
This does however, bring its problems. There have been instances of gangmasters not complying with regulations and thus evading tax. HMRC’s decision to increase the number of specialist officers marks a real effort to completely crack down on such practice. These officers are expected to raise an additional half a billion pounds of tax over the next four years.
Is this good news for farmers? Well, it could be. The new officers will apparently offer free health checks to businesses to help them use legitimate labour providers and tackle fraud within the industry.
This may be helpful, as it’s not only tax which can be a problem. Cases of the use of illegal workers supplied by gangmasters have also been seen in recent years. Farmers are in a vulnerable position as it is illegal to use workers or services supplied by an unlicensed labour provider in the regulated sector of agriculture, horticulture, shellfish gathering, food processing and packaging. Farmers using unlicensed labour could find themselves with a maximum penalty of six months in prison and a fine. For this reason, if using a gangmaster, farmers need to be especially vigilant at checking their legitimacy, since illegality on the gangmaster’s part, could result in the farmer facing jail. The free health checks on using legitimate providers could therefore be a helpful provision.
Although labour providers are found in agriculture, other sectors such as construction, hospitality and leisure and security amongst others all face these issues. It is certain that HMRC will continue to focus its efforts on all sectors where there is a demand for a flexible workforce.
Ian Goodwin, partner and head of the agriculture department at Lanyon Bowdler comments “Farmers and growers must be increasingly vigilant and make checks to ensure that any supply of labour to their businesses is provided by a licensed gangmaster”.
If you are a farmer with a need for short term, low skilled agricultural work, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) may also be worth looking into. This scheme allows the recruitment of seasonal workers from abroad for short periods. The workers come from Bulgaria and Romania on a strict quota basis. The scheme is managed by nine SAWS Operators across the UK on behalf of the UK Border Agency.