The Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) has revoked the licence of a Birmingham gangmaster after finding multiple non-compliances and discovering a previously twice revoked gangmaster heavily involved in the running of the business.

Harjeet Singh, director of HKM Solutions, which has now had its licence revoked, was previously a driver for a revoked gangmaster business run by Kashmir Singh. Workers and the GLA did not believe Harjeet Singh was the person running HKM Solutions.

Kashmir Singh previously ran gangmaster businesses Newtex and New Horizons Personnel, whose licenCes were both revoked by the GLA,  one of them for  “persistent and systematic exploitation of the workers”.

Harjeet Singh failed the Principal Authority competence test and was declared “not fit and proper” to hold a licence due to a number of failings including:

• attempting to mislead GLA inspectors by claiming Kashmir Singh, who attended meetings on behalf of HKM Solutions with the labour user, had no links to the business
• lack of paperwork
• no evidence to suggest proper checks had been carried out when a worker who was not entitled to work in the UK was identified
• no draft contracts for workers
• a failure to provide workers who were not familiar with the rules of driving in the UK any training
  
  
  

Paul Whitehouse, chairman of the GLA, says: “This looks like another case of an exploitative gangmaster trying to get back into the business. We have stopped many of these characters already and the message is that they are not welcome and will be stopped by the GLA.

“Workers in agriculture and the food industry are already in a safer place than other areas of the economy, thanks to the work of the GLA. We will not stop searching for the rogues and are already expanding our reach by working closely with the industry to find and block rogues from our regulated sectors.”