The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced that it has levied fines totalling more than £39 million on recruitment agencies operating in the construction sector for breaches of the Competition Act 1998.
The agencies involved agreed to boycott another company (Parc UK), which had entered the market and threatened their business model, and colluded to fix target fee rates for supplying candidates to the construction industry.
A whistleblower informed the OFT in exchange for leniency over its own breaches.