So says Driver Hire, which is running an information campaign over the coming months to help increase customers and non-customers knowledge of this new legislation.

The campaign has already kicked off with two half-day seminars held at the firm's head office. Guest speakers were Ben Digby, a senior policy advisor at the CBI and Ron Drake, a senior employment solicitor at Cobbetts and part-time employment tribunal judge.

Driver Hire chief executive Chris Chidley explained that the purpose of the campaign was to raise awareness of the regulations and debunk the misinformation surrounding them.

'The new regulations, which come into force on 1 October 2011, do not mean that temporary workers will have the same employment rights as their directly employed colleagues,' said Mr Chidley. 'Agency workers only qualify for the new rights once they have completed a 12-week qualifying period where they are doing the same job with the same customer.'

He added: 'Before the regulations are implemented, both agencies and customers will have to ensure that they understand how to apply them. There are penalties if it is proved that you have failed to meet the rights of your temporary workers.'

'One key requirement when the regulations are implemented in October is the need for both customers and agencies to track and monitor the status of all their agency workers and apply them to the regulations. Driver Hire's highly sophisticated IT systems mean that we are ideally placed to help them do this.'