Fair Work Assembly: what the Fair Work Agency does

On 9 October 2026, more than 100 delegates met in Birmingham for the first Fair Work Assembly. That may sound like a specialist policy event, but the subject could not be more everyday: who makes sure your rights at work are real, and not just words on a page? (gov.uk) According to the Fair Work Agency’s own account, the room included trade unions, employers, civil society organisations and academics, all invited to help shape the agency’s priorities. So this was not simply a launch event. It was an early test of how the new body wants to listen, learn and set its direction. (gov.uk)

To make sense of the event, we first need to know what the Fair Work Agency actually is. The agency began operating on 7 April 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025 as an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade. Its purpose is to bring several state enforcement jobs into one place after years of a system the government described as fragmented and difficult for both workers and employers to follow. (gov.uk) In practical terms, that means one public body is being built to deal with areas that used to sit across different enforcement functions, including minimum wage enforcement, employment agency standards, gangmasters licensing and serious labour exploitation. Over time, the government says the remit will widen further, including holiday pay and statutory sick pay. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)

That helps explain why Birmingham mattered. Delegates were discussing employment rights enforcement, risks in the changing world of work, and what the agency should treat as priorities as it grows. The sessions also drew on lessons from people with direct experience of labour abuse or exploitation, which matters if policy is supposed to reflect real working life. (gov.uk) **What this means:** when officials talk about the labour market, they are talking about the rules and relationships that shape your working life - pay, contracts, recruitment, safety and what happens when something goes wrong. Enforcement is the part that turns those rights from promises into something people can actually use. (gov.uk)

The Fair Work Agency says it protects workers in two ways: by helping employers comply with the law, and by taking action where they do not. Its published role includes enforcing the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage, regulating employment agencies, licensing labour suppliers in agriculture and food, taking action against serious labour exploitation, and pursuing employers who fail to pay tribunal awards or Acas settlements. (gov.uk) This is worth pausing on, because many people assume employment rights are always enforced through tribunals. They are not. The agency itself says it does not replace Acas and does not replace employment tribunals; instead, it sits alongside them as the state enforcement arm in areas where the law gives it that role. (gov.uk)

Why does this matter? Because weak enforcement does not stay on paper; it shows up in people’s wages and working conditions. An official government factsheet says the Resolution Foundation estimates around 900,000 UK workers each year have holiday pay withheld, while the Low Pay Commission estimated that 19.4 per cent of workers paid at or around the wage floor were underpaid in 2024, covering about 371,000 employee jobs. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) Those figures help explain why ministers wanted a single agency. The same factsheet says the old model was fragmented and inefficient, which made it harder for workers to get help and easier for some breaches to go unchallenged. Put simply, rights are only as strong as the system people can actually reach. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)

The people leading this work are Lisa Pinney, the agency’s chief executive, and Matthew Taylor, its chair. Pinney joined in April 2026, while Taylor was appointed in October 2025; government biographies say both appointments were tied to building a single enforcement body rather than leaving workers to deal with a patchwork of agencies. (gov.uk) That also explains the tone of the Birmingham event. The agency’s own coverage stressed partnership and collaboration, not only enforcement. That may sound gentle, but it reflects a real policy choice: helping employers get the rules right early, while still keeping strong powers for investigations, penalties and prosecution when the law is broken. (gov.uk)

There is another reason employers who follow the rules will watch this closely. When one business underpays staff or uses abusive labour practices, it can undercut firms that do the right thing. The Fair Work Agency’s published aim is not only to protect workers but also to support fair competition and make compliance clearer for employers. (gov.uk) **What it means for you:** if you are a worker, a student with a part-time job, or someone entering the labour market for the first time, this agency is meant to make the enforcement map easier to understand. If you are an employer, the message is that guidance and enforcement are being built together, with a stronger expectation that lawful treatment at work is not optional. (gov.uk)

The agency’s published priorities for 2026 to 2027 are a clearer and simpler system for workers and employers, more visible enforcement, and operational and digital improvements. Its delivery plan also says around 500 colleagues are being transferred into the new body as part of building its future model, which gives a sense of the scale of the change now under way. (gov.uk) So the first Fair Work Assembly should be read as the opening chapter, not the finished version. Birmingham showed that the Fair Work Agency wants to be shaped in public, with input from unions, employers, campaigners and researchers. The harder test comes next: whether this new body can make employment rights easier to understand, easier to enforce and harder to ignore. (gov.uk)