7.— (1) (a) Assignments forming part of the same series of assignments shall, for the purposes of the determination of the basic working and employment conditions of an agency worker, be treated as a single assignment.

(b) For the avoidance of doubt, the period between the expiration of an assignment in a series of assignments and the commencement of the assignment immediately following it in the series shall not be taken into account in determining the basic working and employment conditions of an agency worker.

(2) For the purposes of this section, two or more assignments (in this subsection referred to as “relevant assignments”) constitute a series of assignments if—

(a) the hirer, in relation to a relevant assignment (other than the relevant assignment first occurring), is—

(i) the same person as the hirer in relation to the relevant assignment immediately preceding it, or

(ii) a person who is connected with the hirer referred to in subparagraph (i),

(b) in relation to each relevant assignment, the agency worker is the same person as the agency worker in relation to the other relevant assignments,

(c) in relation to the relevant assignments—

(i) the agency worker works in whole or in part at the same place of work, or

(ii) the agency worker’s work is directed and supervised from the same place (in circumstances where the agency worker works or is required to work at different locations),

and

(d) in relation to the relevant assignments, the agency worker does the same or similar work under the same or similar conditions, and any difference in the work done or the conditions under which it is done as between any relevant assignment and any other relevant assignment is of minor significance when viewed as a whole or occurs with such irregularity as not to be significant,

but shall not constitute such a series if the period between the commencement of any relevant assignment and the expiration of the immediately preceding relevant assignment exceeds 3 months.

(3) For the purposes of this section, a person is connected with another person if—

(a) in the case of an individual, he or she is—

(i) the spouse, child, parent, brother or sister of that individual, or

(ii) a business partner of that individual where the work to which the assignment concerned relates is carried out for the purposes of that business,

(b) in relation to a company or partnership, he or she is a person who exercises control (within the meaning of section 158 of the Corporation Tax Act 1976) of that company or partnership,

(c) in relation to a company he or she is—

(i) a company that is a holding company or subsidiary (within the meaning of section 155 of the Companies Act 1963) of the company first-mentioned in this paragraph, or

(ii) a company, the holding company (within the meaning of the said section 155) of which is also the holding company of the company first-mentioned in this paragraph.