hello, george, new guy, with a question: i have a temp agency pushing me to go on an umbrella pay thing, but i have no interest in this guff. can i insist on normal paye? if they continue to annoy ,e with this, i might just boot them anyway. thanks. gmcn.

I recently started a new 6 month contract where I am employed by an agency who then send my pay to the umbrella company I use as a contractor. I've been there for a month now and initially I realised they had set me up as paying me monthly rather than weekly - which I am used to - so I requested it be weekly which they duly changed. So I have been waiting to get my pay through and last week I was still waiting - checking my umbrella company's pay tracker online to see when I was going to be paid. I contacted the umbrella company to ask what was going on - they said they hadn't been paid by the agency. So I contacted the agency who told me my pay from the first two weeks of my contract had been paid to the umbrella company on the Monday - and should have cleared on the Wednesday (which was the day before I had contacted them.) So I contacted the umbrella company again with the payment date info - one customer services person even forwarded me my own email asking me whether I could tell them where the money was! Eventually I made a complaint and they called me - stating that they had received the money but that the agency sends the pay for all their contractors as a lump sum with a remittance note to state who should be paid and how much etc. However they had also had a huge deduction in the same payment which wiped out their account - leaving only around £1000 - not enough to pay anyone. I contacted the agency again and they said that while the deduction was being looked into, that as far as they were concerned they had paid me (and everyone else on the remittance) and that it was up to the umbrella company to sort things out. I am hopeful that they will sort this out between them - but in the meantime where do I stand with regards to obtaining the money which I am legally entitled to having worked for it? They even said they couldn't notify all the people concerned as there were too many to contact - meaning anyone else wondering where their money was would have to get in touch with them - to then probably be given inaccurate information like I was to begin with, before they find out what is really going on. Surely the umbrella company has a responsibility to notify their clients of any problem with making their payments? Any advice is welcome. Many thanks