The document a client asks for at the worst possible moment

A client's compliance team emails on a Tuesday afternoon asking for the right-to-work check and DBS certificate for a worker on-site since March. The consultant who placed that worker left in the summer. The file was on their laptop, in a folder named after the client, or in an email that's now archived somewhere nobody can search.

This is not a rare scenario. It's one of the most common ways recruitment agencies lose client trust, fail audits, or end up defending a placement they can no longer prove was compliant at the time.

What counts as a compliance record

For most UK recruitment agencies, "compliance paperwork" isn't one document. It's a set of records that need to exist for every worker, every placement, and every client relationship:

  • Right to work checks and copies of the documents used to verify them
  • DBS certificates, where required for the role or sector
  • References and any qualification or registration checks (NMC, CSCS, driving licences, professional body membership)
  • Signed contracts — contract for services, terms of engagement, or employment contracts depending on worker type
  • Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) comparator information and the date the 12-week qualifying period was reached
  • Insurance certificates, both the agency's own cover and any required from umbrella companies or subcontractors
  • Signed timesheets and evidence of hours worked, especially where National Minimum Wage compliance could be questioned
  • GDPR consent and data retention records for candidates on file

Some of these need to be retrievable within days if a client audit, tribunal, or HMRC enquiry lands. Others need to be reviewed and renewed on a schedule — a DBS certificate or right-to-work document doesn't stay valid forever.

Why one missing document costs more than the file

The real cost of a missing compliance record is rarely the document itself. It's what it triggers:

  • A client pausing or reviewing the whole account while you scramble to reconstruct the file
  • A framework contract or PSL (preferred supplier list) position put at risk over a single audit finding
  • Time lost — a consultant, a manager, and sometimes a director spending a day chasing an email trail instead of placing candidates
  • Exposure if the worker's status genuinely can't be evidenced and a claim or enquiry follows

Agencies rarely lose these contracts over one incident. They lose them because the audit reveals the paperwork was never reliably organised in the first place — and the client starts wondering what else is missing.

Where compliance records usually go wrong

Most agencies don't lack the paperwork. They lack a single place it consistently lives:

  • Right-to-work scans sitting in individual consultants' inboxes
  • DBS certificates in a shared drive folder that's been renamed three times
  • Contracts signed via three different e-signature tools, none linked to the worker's actual record
  • Timesheets in one system, compliance documents in another, and the client relationship in a CRM that knows about neither

When a consultant leaves, changes role, or is simply on holiday when the request comes in, the paperwork effectively disappears with them — not because it was deleted, but because nobody else knows where to look.

What good record-keeping actually looks like

A compliance record system that survives audits and staff turnover has a few consistent features:

  • Every document is attached to the worker or candidate record it belongs to, not filed separately by date or client
  • Expiry dates are tracked automatically, with reminders before a DBS certificate, right-to-work document, or insurance certificate lapses
  • There's a clear audit trail showing who checked what, and when
  • Access isn't dependent on one person's inbox or one person's memory

How N Six Hub keeps agency compliance in one place

Inside N Six Hub, worker and candidate compliance sits inside HR & People, linked directly to the same record used for onboarding, timesheets and placements. When a new worker joins through Worker Onboarding, the documents required for that role — right-to-work evidence, DBS, references, signed contract — are captured against their record from day one, not scattered across whoever handled the placement.

Expiry dates don't rely on someone checking a spreadsheet. Automation can flag documents approaching renewal, so a DBS certificate due to lapse or a right-to-work check nearing review gets picked up before a client asks, not after.

Because compliance sits in the same system as the rest of the placement — the client record, the timesheet, the invoice — nothing needs to be reconstructed from memory when an audit lands. It's already attached to the worker it belongs to.

Scaling without a growing compliance backlog

As an agency grows — more workers, more clients, more sectors with their own compliance requirements — the paperwork grows faster than most back offices can keep pace with manually. The alternative to hiring a larger compliance team for every extra hundred placements is a system that tracks the routine parts automatically, so your team's time goes into the checks that genuinely need a human judgement call, not chasing files.

See how this fits the rest of an agency's operation on the recruitment agency page, or start building your hub to see how compliance, timesheets and client accounts connect in one place.