A staggered implementation of the government's pension reforms will confuse both recruitment agencies and IT contractors, an expert has claimed.

Anne Fairweather, head of public policy at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), said that there are additional concerns about how the new requirements will work with a temporary worker model.

Under the Department for Work and Pensions regulations, employees will be automatically enrolled in pension schemes from 2012.

Ms Fairweather stated: "The REC has raised concerns about how this will work in practice, with temporary agency workers often moving between agencies and sometimes only completing very short assignments."

She added that introducing the scheme in phases depending on the size of a company's payroll will not make the system any easier to understand for IT contractors.

Earlier this week, Ms Fairweather reiterated industry concerns with the pension reforms at the renaming ceremony of the National Employment Savings Trust, where she stated that the main issue was that the changes were designed primarily for a stable workforce.