The Stage

Up-front about fees

Published Tuesday 26 October 2004 at 10:55

I have read with interest the letter from Mr Clive Hurst entitled ‘Fee frustration’ (Opinion, October 21, page 8).

Mr Hurst is wrong in his analysis and I am pleased to inform him that his fears are groundless. My Legal Eagle column of October 14 was directed to answering a specific question about a fee paid for being “accepted on to the books” of an agency which, for the sake of convenience, I categorised as a ‘registration fee’. However, the prohibition against up-front fees is not confined to that and extends to any fees being charged to a work seeker for finding or seeking to find work for that person.

There is an exception for most jobs in the entertainment industry, provided the fees concerned are payable only out of earnings of the work seeker from work which the agency has found for that person - precisely the situation Mr Hurst was advocating. However, the proviso does not apply in the limited circumstances mentioned in my column, namely where the fee is for inclusion of the work seeker’s details in a printed publication or electronic form, such as a web site and either that is the only service to be provided by the agency or the fee is no more than a reasonable estimate of the cost of production and circulation of the publication concerned and in either case a copy of the publication and the terms of business of the agency have first been supplied to the work seeker.

The general prohibition and exception for the entertainment industry are not new and have been in place since at least 1973. What is new is the proviso and the qualifications to it, which have been introduced by the new 2003 Regulations. Accordingly, Mr Hurst’s suggestion that “we all know” the DTI’s up-front ban “is nothing but a sham” is untenable and I wonder where he purports to have got this information from.

D Michael Rose

c/o Tarlo Lyons Solicitors

Watchmaker Court

33 St John’s Lane

London EC1M