The new chief executive officer of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) said he plans a dual track approach to the sector, with prosecution to be used only as a last resort. 

Paul Broadbent (right) took up his role in January after a 30-year career in the police. He told Recruiter that he would crack down hard on those who exploit vulnerable workers and “deliberately flout the legislation”. 

At the same time he said he was determined to work more closely with “the vast majority” of gangmasters and labour providers who he said were “totally ethical”.

He said his vision was one of co-regulation, where the GLA helps labour providers to comply with the rules. “We expect to regulate with consent — that is the key thing moving forward because it is better for everyone… The ideal would be prevention rather than prosecution mode,” he said. “It’s more carrot than stick,” he added.

Broadbent said he saw a key objective for the GLA as promoting growth within the sector and not stifling it by having “an unwieldy licensing system”. “We need to streamline that system so that the compliant providers and labour users can continue their business and flourish,” he said.  

“We want to ease the burden of those compliant and ethical providers and suppliers, so there is a greater element of trust and discretion,” he continued. “This will allow us some modest additional capacity to look at those serious cases where people are being smuggled into the country and exploited.” 

Broadbent said one measure being considered was having a set period between reviews of labour providers after the GLA has given them a clean bill of health. 

Steve Hill, operations director of GLA licence holder Extrastaff, said he supported Broadbent’s approach of “working with the good guys, so we can all work against the bad guys”. However, he called for a tougher approach on those who operated without a licence. “They should be clobbered and not just told ‘get a licence’ — that’s a bit odd,” Hill told Recruiter.

Less red tape is fine, said Hill, however he went on to offer Broadbent the following advice: “If there are rules stick to them, make sure they are easy to understand, and that everyone applies them. If not [your approach should be] ‘we will close you down and take your licence away’.”