Professional Passport accreditation – what is it and why is it important? Churchill Knight & Associates Ltd is accredited by Professional Passport, a leading independent professional membership organisation in the flexible workers market. Find out who Professional Passport is and how it can help your agency stay on the right side of HMRC.

Who is Professional Passport?

Professional Passport works with all aspects of the contractor and freelancer industry, including:

• Contractors
• Agencies
• End-clients
• Accountancy and payroll providers

Professional Passport aims to help all sectors it works with reduce risk, simplify processes, save costs and more. Crawford Temple, its CEO, also regularly attends HMRC meetings to stay abreast of ever-changing legislation and represent the rights of Professional Passport members.

Unlike other industry bodies or membership associations, Professional Passport does not have any founders, shareholders or investors that fall under any of the categories above. Therefore it is a totally independent, unbiased organisation.

Professional Passport operates on a Code of Conduct and Guiding Principles that it and its accredited users must adhere to – including honesty and integrity. Any company that wishes to have a Professional Passport accreditation, including Churchill Knight as a contractor accountant and umbrella company, must undergo a full yearly audit to assess its compliance and whether its worthy of an accreditation.

Why work with a provider that has a Professional Passport accreditation?

Professional Passport assesses the compliance of accountancy and payroll providers; it is the only organisation in the UK that does so independently. It only lists providers that have had their internal processes audited successfully – this is not the case for other well-known industry associations.

As an agency, working with a Professional Passport-accredited accountancy or payroll provider can also give your agency the benefits of a Professional Passport membership including £5 million debt transfer insurance.

Debt transfer insurance ensures your agency is protected against liability when working with accountancy and payroll providers. When recruitment consultants recommend providers to candidates, the agency is at risk in the event that the recommended provider is not compliant. Professional Passport’s £5 million debt transfer insurance covers your agency against this risk by holding all of the liability.

As you can see, having a Professional Passport membership as a recruitment agency is priceless.

One major contractor services trade body does not have as rigorous accreditation processes as Professional Passport. Make sure you read the Code of Conduct thoroughly when looking at an accountancy firm’s accreditations; if you see that an organisation does not conduct independent audits of its members, and simply goes by their word, how can you be sure it is a trustworthy accreditation? When an organisation cannot fully guarantee the compliance of a provider, the accreditation should be questioned.

Other benefits of Professional Passport

• Access to fully audited and approved supplier listings
• Access to resources and news on changing legislation as they happen
• Information on best practice with regards to Agency Workers Regulations (AWR), IR35, MSC legislation and more
• Ability to access Professional Passport’s IR35 assessment service
• Contact us to find out more about what’s included for your agency

Do you have questions?

We understand choosing suppliers to work with and recommend to your candidates can be daunting and time-consuming, so we are happy to answer any questions when it comes to working with a Professional Passport member firm. It is always important to assess a provider’s accreditations, as these can give you some insight into their credibility.

Our Agency team is on-hand to help you with any candidate-related queries you have, and for more information on partnering with Churchill Knight visit our Recruiters Zone or contact agencysupport@churchill-knight.co.uk.

Have you seen our recruiter guides?

Visit our Downloads section to access free guides on legislation, Churchill Knight’s services, and factsheets of industry legislation that concerns your agency.