Agency outsourcing payroll

[wst]

Outsourcing payroll is fairly standard. It's always been "company that I'm physically working for" sends info to "agency", and the agency would just pass info on to a payroll company and job's a goodun.

This one that I'm starting with (Again) on Monday used to do that. But now it seems that the company they use lets me claim back travel expenses (45p/mile) and food (£5 when I spend between 5-10 hours at work, or £10 for more, £15 if I have to get a meal for the way home or something. Anyway)...

The maths on this means I'd be claiming ~£22 a day (distance and lunch), I have no gripes with that. But er, they're charging £15 a week. So... what's the catch. Is there one? I've never done this sort of thing exactly before.

Apparently I can't claim if I don't expect to work for this company after this specific job is over? What if I do sort of expect to work for them after this specific job but Richard Branson lands his balloon in my garden and offers me a job? Or what if the agency doesn't find anything for me after this job is over, am I expected to sit on my arse and wait, or can I work for someone else without penalty? These are the only worrying sorta things for me about this as far as I can tell...

[wst]

Luckily for me it was not a high-paying job (not enough to start thinking "an accountant would be worth it") and even luckier for me, I was crap at it and was asked to leave (I might've said something along the lines of "I won't quit but this is not going well" to the boss there, he understood...), so I'm out from under the umbrella.

Still, stank of bad fish. I might be a little bit better off than if the agency did my pay like they used to but I don't think I'd want to go near it with a bargepole longer-term.