I'm still digging around the details on this but on the face of it, the threat to give agency workers permanent benefits after 12 weeks in post looks like it will apply to Umbrella users. So as I see it at the moment, either the umbrella providers will have to supply those benefits to their workers - funded, no doubt, out of the contractors gross income - or clients will simply stop using umbrellas for anything other than short-term roles and demand true agency workers or
Ltd Co contractors. Either way, it looks to have some potetnially damaging impacts on that corner of the market.
The solution, on the face of it, would be to go Limited yourself. However there's that niggling phrase in the proposal about "working through a Limited Liability Company but not truly self-employed". Simply switching from Umbrella to
Ltd may mean you fail that test
Of course it's not going to happen until 2011. We will be in a seriously different world by then.