DPD temporary workers may have missed out on sick pay and pensions, internal documents show
Internal documents from DPD suggest that thousands of temporary workers may have missed out on statutory sick pay and pension contributions, raising concerns that recruitment agencies supplying staff to the courier firm could be breaching employment law. The records indicate that DPD's payments to these agencies did not factor in the cost of such entitlements, suggesting workers were either denied payments they were owed, discouraged from taking sick leave, or moved off assignments before qualifying for a pension. The findings matter because they point to a wider pattern of potential worker exploitation within supply chains used by major UK brands, and highlight questions over whether companies at the top of these chains are doing enough to ensure fair treatment further down.
The Guardian examined internal DPD spreadsheets covering more than 3,000 temporary workers over the past two financial years, which included hourly pay, holiday pay and national insurance costs but no allowance for sick pay or pensions. Employment law experts, including a solicitor from Mulberry's, said this raised doubts about whether workers were receiving their statutory entitlements. Industry guidance from the Association of Labour Providers states that firms paying unrealistically low rates risk "conniving in illegality" through worker exploitation. DPD, which employs more than 15,000 staff and delivers over 260m parcels annually for clients including John Lewis and Amazon, said its commercial arrangements allow agencies to meet their statutory obligations and are benchmarked against industry competitors.
- DPD temp workers may have missed sick pay and pension entitlements
- Internal records lacked provisions for these statutory payments
- DPD says agency rates meet legal obligations and industry benchmarks
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Temporary workers can be hired through recruitment agencies rather than employed directly by the company they work for. In the UK, such workers are still legally entitled to certain protections, including statutory sick pay if they fall ill and, after a qualifying period, enrolment in a workplace pension. These entitlements are meant to be funded through the rate the client company pays the agency supplying the staff.
DPD is one of the UK's largest courier firms, employing more than 15,000 people directly and delivering over 260 million parcels a year on behalf of major retailers such as John Lewis and Amazon. Like many large firms, it also relies on temporary staff sourced through agencies to help handle its workload. Internal spreadsheets reviewed by the Guardian, covering pay for thousands of these workers, are said to show no allowance for sick pay or pension costs within the rates DPD paid to the agencies.
This matters because it raises questions about whether such workers received benefits they were legally owed, and about the responsibilities of large companies for conditions further down their supply chains, even when staff are not employed by them directly. Employment law specialists and industry bodies have pointed to broader concerns about agencies operating on low margins potentially falling short of legal obligations. DPD has said its commercial arrangements are structured to allow agencies to meet their statutory duties.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
A reasonable advocate for stronger accountability would argue that companies at the top of a supply chain cannot simply outsource their conscience along with their labour. If DPD's own spreadsheets show payments to agencies with no allowance for statutory sick pay or pensions, that is a red flag a diligent principal contractor should have caught, not a problem to be shrugged off as someone else's legal responsibility. Given DPD's scale and bargaining power, and industry guidance warning that unrealistically low rates risk "conniving in illegality", the fair-minded view is that firms benefiting from cheap flexible labour have a duty to verify, not merely assume, that the rates they set actually allow agencies to meet their legal obligations to workers.
The case against
An equally reasonable defender of DPD's position would note that agencies, not DPD, are the workers' legal employer, and it is those agencies that bear direct statutory responsibility for sick pay and pension contributions, along with the specific knowledge of each worker's hours, tenure and entitlements needed to calculate them. DPD says its commercial rates are benchmarked against industry norms and structured to allow agencies to meet their obligations, which is a defensible commercial practice rather than evidence of wrongdoing, and a large client cannot be expected to audit every downstream payroll decision an agency makes. Holding lead firms strictly liable for every compliance failure by independent contractors they engage could, on this view, discourage the use of flexible staffing altogether, harming the same workers it aims to protect.