Interpreter Service Level Agreement

InSignLanguage Ltd — ISL-LEG-C03 — version 1.0 — effective 8 September 2026

1. What this document is

This is the service level agreement between InSignLanguage Ltd and you, the interpreter. It says three things: what we expect from you on a job, what you have to prove to us before and while you work, and what we add on top before the work reaches the client.

It is the measurable layer underneath the Interpreter Supplier Terms (ISL-LEG-C01). C01 is the contract — your status, substitution, the commercial terms. This document is the standard. Where C01 and this document conflict, C01 wins.

It does not change your status. You are a self-employed professional running your own business, and nothing here creates employment.

2. Who it applies to

Every interpreter we contract, whether the work reaches you through our booking team, the Marketplace or the Video Relay Service, and whether it is delivered in person, online, or recorded to camera.

3. What we expect from you

3.1 Answering work

Answer a booking offer, yes or no, within 8 working hours. A decline costs us nothing if it is quick. Silence is what damages the client, because we cannot start looking for anyone else until you have answered.

Two exceptions, because 8 working hours is useless when the job is close:

• Anything starting within 48 hours: answer within 2 hours.

• Video Relay Service calls follow the VRS flow, which treats no answer within 8 hours as a decline and moves the offer on automatically.

Once you accept, the job is yours. Substitution is governed by C01; tell us before you arrange it, never after.

3.2 Before the assignment

Read whatever preparation material we send you. If we have sent you nothing and the job needs it, ask us — do not turn up cold and hope.

Tell us as soon as you know if anything makes you the wrong interpreter for the job: a conflict of interest, a prior relationship with anyone involved, a subject you are not competent in, or a Deaf person who has asked not to work with you. Withdrawing early is professional. Discovering it in the room is not.

3.3 Starting

In person: be on site and ready 15 minutes before the start time, and use that time to meet the Deaf person and agree how the two of you will work.

Online or recorded: be logged in and tested 10 minutes before the start time — camera, lighting, background and sound checked before the client joins, not during.

If you are running late, tell us immediately. We would rather warn the client than have them wonder.

3.4 During

Work to ISO 18841:2018, which we hold certification for (certificate ATCISO2479, valid to 08/12/2028), and to the code of conduct of the register you are on.

Interpret what is said. Do not summarise, edit, improve or advise, and do not take on a role — advocate, chaperone, support worker, note-taker — that you were not booked for. If you are asked to, say no and tell us.

Working alone and continuously, you need 15 minutes of rest per hour. That is a working requirement, not a courtesy, and discussion stops during it. Where a job is co-worked, agree the handover pattern with your co-worker before it starts, not on the fly.

Confidentiality is absolute and does not end when the job does.

3.5 Afterwards

Tell us the same day if anything happened that we need to know: the assignment overran, it did not happen, the Deaf person did not attend, something went wrong, or something was raised that touches safeguarding.

🚨 Safeguarding concerns are told to us immediately, not at the end of the day — and they go to the Head of Interpreting Services, not to the client contact.

3.6 If you have to cancel

Tell us the moment you know, and aim to give us 7 days where it is in your control. That is an expectation about being a good supplier, not a charging tier — the charging is not in this document.

Your first move is substitution, not cancellation. C01 gives you an unfettered right to provide a competent substitute, and supplying a competent substitute discharges the obligation completely.

📌 What you may owe is set out in Annex I (ISL-LEG-F-I), sections I6 to I9, and only there. This document does not restate it and does not add to it. In outline, so you know what to expect: we mitigate first — inviting your substitute, then sourcing a replacement, then redeploying you elsewhere; anything recoverable is the lower of the actual evidenced additional cost of covering the assignment and a cap set against the Interpreter Fee; if covering the job costs us nothing extra, nothing is owed; and you are never charged the client's fee or our margin.

Annex I §I6 also protects your status in terms: it does not entitle us to fine, dock, discipline or sanction you. It is cost recovery between two businesses for one accepted job.

A Genuine Emergency is not chargeable, and is not recorded against your reliability — Annex I §I8 defines what counts and what evidence we may reasonably ask for.

Reliability and cost are kept apart. A pattern of late withdrawal is a §9 matter here; what a specific job cost to cover is an Annex I matter. Neither is a substitute for the other.

Not turning up, without telling us, is the one failure that ends the relationship rather than starting a conversation.

4. What you prove to us

We check these before you take work from us, and again at renewal. Nothing here is optional, and we do not accept a screenshot of a search result in place of the document.

4.1 The evidence register

Registration. Current registration with the NRCPD, RBSLI or SLRPDC. Give us the register, your registration number and its expiry. We re-check at renewal. Registration is a status, not a qualification — we record both separately.

Qualification. Level 6 or postgraduate interpreting qualification, or the qualification your register requires for the designation you hold.

Enhanced DBS. An enhanced check, and we record the issue date. We accept a certificate up to 3 years old. Beyond that we need a new one — unless you are subscribed to the DBS Update Service, in which case the certificate stays valid for us for as long as your subscription runs and we re-check your status online at renewal.

📌 We ask every new interpreter to join the Update Service. It is the cleaner control for both of us: you never re-apply, and we can confirm your status in minutes when a client asks.

Professional indemnity insurance. Your own cover, in your own name, with the certificate and its expiry date. Our cover does not extend to you.

Right to work and identity. Photo ID and evidence of your right to work in the UK.

Contact. A working professional email address. We keep personal and work addresses apart deliberately — give us the one you want assignments sent to.

4.2 When something lapses

If your registration, DBS or insurance expires and you have not sent us the renewal, we stop offering you work until you do. That is not a sanction, it is what our own certification requires — we cannot present you to a client on evidence we no longer hold.

We will chase you before the expiry date, not after it.

4.3 Continuing professional development

You keep your CPD current as your register requires, and you tell us about training that changes what you can safely take on — safeguarding, mental health, child protection, medical or legal work.

⚠️ Stated honestly: our recording of interpreter CPD and training is not yet complete, and it is an open gap against ISO 18841. Until it is closed we will ask you for specific evidence when a client asks for a specific level, rather than claiming a blanket standard we cannot yet evidence for everyone. Do not let a client be told you hold a training level you have not given us evidence for.

5. Specialisms and scope

Some work is gated. Mental health, legal and justice, child protection and anything touching consent or capacity go only to an interpreter whose evidence for that specialism has been approved by the Head of Interpreting Services.

Do not accept gated work on the basis that you are free that day. If you have not been approved for that specialism, decline it and tell us — we would far rather re-source it than defend it afterwards.

Where the assignment carries real consequence — health, money, liberty or livelihood — it goes to a Registered interpreter, not a Trainee. C01 sets those boundaries by registration tier.

6. What we add

What you deliver is one part of what the client buys. This is the rest of it, and it is what our own service levels to the client depend on.

Matching. We match the interpreter to the field and the setting, not just to the date. A child protection conference, a driving test and a board meeting are not the same job.

Vetting. We hold and re-check the evidence in §4 so the client does not have to ask, and we can answer a procurement questionnaire without coming back to you.

Briefing. We pass on the material the client sends, and we ask for it when they have not.

🚨 Stated honestly: the chain that delivers preparation material to the interpreter is not yet reliable. The booking form now captures it, but nothing yet routes it to you automatically. Until that is fixed, ask us if you have not received anything — and we should not promise a client that briefing material always reaches the interpreter, because today it does not always.

Naming. We tell the client who is coming before the day.

Confirmation. We read every request and confirm it in writing. Confirmation is same-day wherever we can, because our cancellation bands and the client's statutory cooling-off period both run from it.

Cover. If you fall out, finding the replacement is our job, not the client's.

Quality and complaints. We run check-in and post-assignment feedback, and we investigate complaints through the Head of Interpreting Services under our ISO 9001:2015 quality system (certificate GB2005762).

7. What the client sees

The client never sees this document. What they see is the Service Level Agreement (ISL-LEG-F-D) — our hours, our response and confirmation times, how we handle urgent requests, what we measure, and the credits that apply if we fall short.

Read that alongside this one, because most of what we promise the client there, we can only deliver if you meet §3 here. Our confirmation time depends on your answering time. Our reliability figure is your attendance. The client's experience of accuracy is your work, delivered under our name.

Two things we commit to you in return:

• We will not put your name to a claim you have not evidenced.

• We will not accept a booking on your behalf that we know is outside the scope you are approved for.

8. Recorded work — BSL Video Presentations

Recorded work adds four things to §3, because the output outlives the session.

The source content is final before you start. There is no revision cycle, so raise anything unclear in the material before recording, not after.

You are on camera and the recording persists. Your consent covers the purpose agreed at order. If the client later wants to use it commercially — to advertise, to resell, or to promote a paid product — that is a separate permission and a separate charge, and we will come back to you.

We re-record at our own cost for a clear interpreter error, a technical fault, or a briefing instruction we missed. A change of mind by the client is a new job, not a favour you are expected to absorb.

Presentation matters more than it does in a live room: plain background, even lighting, no interruptions.

9. How we measure, and what happens when it slips

We record acceptance times, attendance, lateness, cancellations, complaints and feedback against every interpreter. It is a monitoring mechanism under C01, not a scoreboard, and it exists so that a pattern gets a conversation early.

A first slip gets a conversation. A pattern gets a review with the Head of Interpreting Services. Persistent failure, or any single serious failure on safeguarding, confidentiality or scope, means we stop offering work.

The thresholds, measured over a rolling 12 months and applied once you have taken at least 10 assignments from us — below that the sample is too small to mean anything:

• Offers answered inside the §3.1 window — expected 90%, review below 80%.

• Accepted assignments attended — expected 98%, review below 95%.

• Ready at the required time — expected 95%, review below 90%.

• Cancellations inside 48 hours — expected 2 or fewer, review at 3.

• No-show without contact — expected none, review at the first.

• Upheld complaints — expected none, review at the first.

A review is a conversation with the Head of Interpreting Services about what is going on, not a disciplinary process — you are not our employee. It ends in one of three ways: nothing needed, an agreed change, or we stop offering you work.

10. Where this sits

This document supports the Interpreter Supplier Terms (ISL-LEG-C01) and, if you are listed on the Marketplace, the Interpreter Listing and Profile Terms (ISL-LEG-C02). All cancellation charges, on both the client and the interpreter side, are in Annex I (ISL-LEG-F-I) — nothing in this document changes them. The client-facing service levels are in ISL-LEG-F-D.

Governed by the law of England and Wales. Reviewed annually, or sooner if our certification or a register's requirements change.

Questions about this document: the Head of Interpreting Services, via support@insignlanguage.co.uk.

InSignLanguage Ltd · 26 Domum Road, Portsmouth PO2 0QZ · Company number 10943637 · VAT registration number GB 298 6629 31 · ICO registration ZC163713