Matthew Taylor and the Fair Work Agency

What His Decade-Long Journey Tells Us About the Future of Worker Rights Enforcement

Jeni Morris - NMW Specialist

10/21/20254 min read

As the first chair of the Fair Work Agency takes office in April 2026, UK employers and payroll professionals should revisit the philosophical foundations that will likely shape enforcement priorities

When Matthew Taylor was announced as the inaugural chair of the Fair Work Agency, it marked not a new beginning, but rather the culmination of a decade-long trajectory that began with his landmark 2017 review. For payroll professionals and HR directors navigating an increasingly complex compliance landscape, understanding Taylor’s intellectual journey from recommendation to enforcement is no longer academic, it’s essential.

From Policy Architect to Enforcement Leader

In July 2017, Matthew Taylor delivered ‘Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices’ to then, Prime Minister Theresa May. The report’s central thesis was deceptively simple, all work in the UK should be “fair and decent.” Yet recommendations represented a fundamental reimagining of how employment law should respond to platform economies, flexible working arrangements, and fragmenting employment relationships.

Now, eight years later, he returns not as an advisor but as a regulator, one armed with sweeping enforcement powers over National Minimum Wage (NMW), statutory sick pay, holiday pay entitlements (no timeline given yet), and a raft of other worker protections. The question for employers is not whether the Fair Work Agency will be activist in its approach, but rather which of Taylor’s 2017 principles will guide its enforcement priorities.

The Philosophical Foundation: Worker Status as the Cornerstone

One of Matthew Taylor’s recommendation, clearer employment status, has always been the load-bearing wall of his vision. His proposal for a new 'dependent contractor' category and his insistence that status should be determined by reality, rather than contract wording signal a fundamental scepticism of employer-defined relationships.

For payroll teams, this creates immediate practical concerns. The Fair Work Agency is likely to scrutinise:

  • Deemed employment relationships where self-employed contractors are functionally supervised

  • Intermediary structures (personal service companies, umbrella arrangements) that may obscure true employment status

  • Zero-hours and casual workers whose actual working patterns contradict their contractual flexibility

Matthew Taylor’s philosophy suggests the Agency will adopt a substance-over-form approach, placing the burden of proof firmly on employers to demonstrate that a worker’s status reflects operational reality.

Fair Pay for Flexibility: The NMW Compliance Reckoning

Another of his most operationally challenging recommendation addressed pay for fragmented work, ensuring that flexibility doesn’t subsidise below-minimum-wage earnings. His call for minimum wage protections even during ‘intermittent’ working time presaged years of litigation over waiting time, travel time, and on-call arrangements.

The Fair Work Agency inherits NMW enforcement at a moment when calculation complexity has never been greater. Payroll professionals managing:

  • Salaried hours workers with flexible work patterns and excess working hours

  • Accurate time and attendance arrangements

  • Salary sacrifice schemes that reduce cash pay below NMW thresholds

… should expect heightened scrutiny. Matthew Taylor’s intellectual framework suggests the Agency will take an expansive view of ‘working time’ and a restrictive view of permissible deductions, particularly where flexibility primarily benefits the employer.

The Single Enforcement Body Vision Realised

Perhaps Matthew Taylor’s most prescient recommendation was the creation of a single enforcement body for labour market regulation. The Fair Work Agency represents that vision made concrete, consolidating functions previously scattered across HMRC, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and sector-specific regulators.

This consolidation has profound implications:

  • Cross-cutting investigations that examine NMW, statutory sick pay, holiday pay, and contractual compliance simultaneously

  • Information sharing across previously siloed enforcement functions

  • Pattern-based targeting identifying systemic non-compliance across sectors or business models

For employers accustomed to compartmentalised compliance approaches, where payroll handles NMW, HR manages leave, and procurement oversees agency workers, this unified enforcement model demands integrated governance.

Corporate Governance: The Overlooked Revolution

Another of his recommendations remains his most radical and, for many organisations, the most neglected. The call for board-level responsibility for employment practices and transparent reporting on workforce models represented an attempt to elevate worker rights from operational minutiae to strategic governance.

Yet eight years on, how many UK businesses have designated a specific board member or committee with oversight for NMW compliance? How many can demonstrate that their audit committees systematically review employment status determinations or that remuneration committees consider knock-on wage compression effects when setting executive pay?

The governance gap is striking. Organisations maintain sophisticated controls for financial reporting, data protection, and health and safety, all domains with significant regulatory risk. Yet employment rights compliance often remains diffused across functions, with no single point of senior accountability.

As Matthew Taylor assumes enforcement powers, this governance deficit becomes a critical vulnerability. The Fair Work Agency can be expected to ask not merely whether violations occurred, but whether adequate governance structures existed to prevent them. Employers demonstrating board-level oversight, regular compliance auditing, and documented decision-making frameworks will be far better positioned than those treating payroll compliance as purely technical.

The Taylor Philosophy in Action

Matthew Taylor’s journey from policy architect to enforcement leader provides unusual insight into regulatory philosophy. His 2017 review was fundamentally optimistic about modern working arrangements, he explicitly rejected calls to ban zero-hours contracts or constrain gig platforms. But his optimism was conditional, flexibility was acceptable only if it didn’t compromise fairness.

As the Fair Work Agency begins operations, expect this conditional approach to translate into:

  • Targeted enforcement in sectors where flexibility has historically masked exploitation (social care, hospitality, logistics)

  • Scepticism toward novel contractual structures that appear to engineer around existing protections

  • Emphasis on transparency, with employers expected to demonstrate, not merely assert compliance

Conclusion: Compliance will be Strategically Imperative

For UK employers and payroll professionals, the Fair Work Agency represents more than a new regulator, it embodies a philosophy of worker rights that has been developing for nearly a decade. Matthew Taylor’s intellectual journey from the 2017 review to his current role provides a remarkably clear map of likely enforcement priorities.

The organisations best positioned for this new era won’t be those that minimise compliance costs, but those that have embedded employment rights into their governance frameworks, their operational systems, and their corporate culture. Fair work, Taylor has consistently argued, isn’t a luxury for prosperous times, it’s the foundation of sustainable business models.

The enforcement powers are now in place. The philosophical direction appears clear. The only remaining question is whether your organisation’s compliance infrastructure is ready for the scrutiny it will inevitably face.

If you'd like support preparing your business ahead of the Fair Work Agency contact: info@minimumwagespecialists.co.uk