Reply to post: Re: Life goes on

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Life goes on

I'm talking about things that are going to happen, not things that have happened. Civil engineering contractors tend to be project-based, like IT contractors, but they're also more globally focused in their activities. Asking them to sign up as permies for work that might only last a few months is going to convince a lot of them to either just retire, or to move out of the country.

Construction contractors are people like brickies and plasterers, electricians and plumbers, joiners and welders, but also subcontract services companies that coordinate for sites and bring in specialised knowledge. They have sub cards, but they're often set up as Ltds to make the relationship with contracting companies easier to manage. IR35 will make their life much more complicated, driving up costs in an industry that already operates on long financial risk.

Like I said, the gov is going to be throwing around infrastructure investments in short order (not least to get BIPs and related infrastructure up and running at Calais and on the ports across from Ireland), but at the same time they're placing inordinate pressure on many of the people they will need to design and build that infrastructure.

Capita and G4S won't benefit all that much this time, either. They rely on subcontractors to do all the actual work they contract, a significant number of which are independents like the ones I've outlined above. Their costs are going to rise to cover IR35 changes, either by taking on large numbers of permies that they weren't previously employing, or to cover the increased rates charged by subcontractors willing to stick around and deal with the bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, we'll get more late government projects that go wildly over budget and any apparent revenue increase HMRC sees will be swallowed up in the increased costs the industry has to suffer because of all of this.

This is going way beyond just the narrow focus of the register readership. Entire industries are going to be knocked for six by this.

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