Five checks, five minutes. One of them is a hard legal line that settles most cases on its own — and there is a regulator you can actually report a UK agency to.
Reports of recruitment fraud to Action Fraud more than doubled in two years, from 2,094 in 2022 to 4,876 in 2024. Most guidance on spotting a fake recruiter stops at "trust your instincts". Britain actually has a regulator, a specific set of rules, and a free public register — so you can do better than instinct.
For an ordinary job — tech, admin, finance, engineering, healthcare, anything office-based — a UK recruitment agency cannot charge you a fee for finding you work. That is not etiquette, it is the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003.
So a "registration fee", "admin fee", "CRM access fee", "training you must buy first" or "refundable deposit" is a breach, and by itself tells you what you are dealing with.
There is one real exception, and it is narrow. Schedule 3 of those Regulations permits fees for a specific list of occupations: actors, musicians, singers, dancers and other performers; a long list of creative crew roles; photographic and fashion models; and professional sportspeople. Even there, a 2010 amendment added a cooling-off period before an agency can charge a performer or model for producing photos or recordings of them.
If you are not an actor, a model or a professional athlete, none of that applies to you, and the answer to "should I pay a recruiter?" is simply no.
Search the agency's name at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. It is free and needs no account.
Look at four things: the company status should be Active, not dissolved or in liquidation; the incorporation date should be consistent with a firm that claims years of experience; the registered office should match what the website says; and the filing history should show accounts being filed. An agency placing candidates at scale but filing dormant accounts is worth a second thought.
Note the exact legal name too. Agencies often trade under a brand that differs from the registered entity, which is normal — but the name on any contract should be the registered one.
UK law separates two things that both get called "a recruitment agency":
It matters because it determines who actually pays you and who is responsible if payment fails. Ask directly: "for this role, are you acting as an employment agency or an employment business?" A legitimate consultant answers immediately. Hesitation over that question tells you something.
Ask for a full name, direct number and company email. Then verify the domain properly — @recruitment-firm-uk.net is not the same as the firm's real domain, and lookalikes rely on you not reading letter by letter.
Look them up on LinkedIn. Real recruiters have visible history: previous agencies, colleagues at the same firm, a posting record. Then call the agency's main switchboard number from its website — not a number given to you in the message — and ask for them by name. That single call defeats most impersonation, because scammers cannot answer the real company's phone.
Genuine agency work has friction: a proper conversation about your experience, questions you cannot answer from a CV, a named client or at least a described one, a realistic salary, and a process with stages.
Be wary of an offer with no interview; a salary well above market for the role; contact only through WhatsApp or Telegram; a request for your bank details, passport or National Insurance number before any offer; pressure to decide within hours; or a job description so generic it could apply to anyone.
One more: a real agency will tell you which client it is submitting you to, or ask your permission before submitting you anywhere. Being asked for a blanket right to send your CV wherever they like is a sign your details are the product.
Agency misconduct — including being charged a fee — goes to the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. The EAS regulates every employment agency and employment business providing work-finding services in Great Britain, investigates complaints (which usually come from workers), and enforces the 1973 Act and the 2003 Regulations. You can complain via GOV.UK's "complain about an employment agency" service. Northern Ireland has its own arrangements.
Fraud and scams go to Action Fraud, and to JobsAware, a non-profit set up specifically for job scams and unsafe work, which also feeds intelligence back to enforcement bodies.
Misuse of your personal data — a CV circulated without consent, or details kept indefinitely — is a matter for the Information Commissioner's Office.
Report even when you lost nothing. Enforcement here runs largely on worker complaints; an agency that has taken money from one person has usually asked many others.
Free to join, free to get verified, free to apply — and every employer is verified before a role goes live. We publish our own hiring metrics rather than asking you to trust us.
Related: Are ghost jobs illegal in the UK? — why the posting itself is barely regulated, even though agency conduct is. And how to check if an Indian company is actually hiring.
This is general information, not legal advice. The prohibition on charging work-seekers is in the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, regulation 26, with the permitted occupations listed in Schedule 3 of the same Regulations and a cooling-off period added by the 2010 Amendment Regulations. The GOV.UK overview of the Conduct Regulations summarises the duties, and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate enforces them across Great Britain under the Employment Agencies Act 1973. Company records are free at Companies House. Recruitment-fraud counts are Action Fraud figures reported by the BBC. Current as of August 2026.