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6th November 2009: Consultation Documents and coping with the consulation process
Each time a new consultation document comes along people always want to know one thing "What are we going to do about it?"
We'd love to give you an answer, but it's never as simple as that. The first problem is that we're dealing with a consultation document, so it's likely that the initial proposition will change (it certainly did with the MSC legislation, but I'll come back to that later), so a definitive answer is impossible. We will already have made our feelings known, either directly or through our advisors - people like KPMG and Alan Nolan of Aspire Business Partnership. Then it's a matter of waiting for feedback and planning for a variety of scenarios.
We're very lucky to have the advisors we do because their experience and as a result contacts keep us very well informed of what the general feeling is about any consultation that may affect you. It is only the general feeling though, ultimately we have to wait the same as everybody else until the consultation document is released to the public.
The Agency Workers Directive document has only recently been released, so Wole our resident lawyer and our advisors have been ploughing through it. I really don't envy them as it's 170 pages of legalese, but it's the only way to know where we stand. We should be able to let you know very soon how or if it will affect you.
The MSC legislation is a great example of how these things can change a lot over time. When it was first announced we responded to the document with our point of view, but at the same time started to plan ahead. When the consultation document was published there were some changes which we had to make. Then when the legislation was finally introduced there were even more changes. As you can see it's a fairly fluid process, but one that any company in our industry has to learn to cope with if they want to continue to be successful.
So if we seem reluctant to comment it's not because we haven't got anything to say, it's just that we don't want to mislead you.
Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
06/11/2009
