Can your employer change your work contract? Our team answer your questions... Duncan Carson was an Asda employee who worked from 6am to midday as a baker in one of the chain's stores. Those times suited him as he was used to working mornings and he had...
Employment Law News
Holiday pay for those who work only part of the year and have no contractually set hours should not be calculated on a pro rata basis, under a judgement that will affect many in the education sector. The Court of Appeal has ruled in The Harper...
Reaching tipping point on gratuities... Restaurateurs and other hospitality sector businesses should not bank on Brexit delaying the Government’s plans for legislation designed to deal with tipping protocols. In December last year the...
Our employment team tackle the tricky subject... Recently, the issue of deduction from wages of employees has come to the forefront again as Costa employees in Essex have complained that a sum of £200 was deducted from their final payslip to cover...
Bring your kid to work day...? If you work full time in the UK, you are entitled to at least 28 days of paid annual leave, including the eight bank holidays. However, for parents of school-age children, the numbers don’t quite add up. First of...
The recent case of Harpur Trust v Brazel & UNISON heard at the Court of Appeal clarified the legal position regarding the minimum annual leave entitlement for all workers. Currently, full time employees are entitled to 28 days' paid annual leave...
Supermarket giant Tesco to shed 4,500 staff Out of a total workforce of 340,000, the UK's largest grocer has reported that, in order to run their business more sustainably, they will be looking to make around 4,500 members of staff redundant from...
Gone are the days of liquid pub lunches and business meetings over a pint. A growing trend sees big insurance firms banning their employees from drinking during working hours. Lloyds and the London Metal Exchange are amongst those firms which are putting...
Two recent tribunal claims highlight the challenge for employers in safely navigating personal expression by employees in the workplace. A hospital nurse who discussed her Christian views with patients, offering a bible to one and advising...
June is Pride month, when the LGBTQ+ community celebrates with a series of events. It’s a joyful and fun time, but it’s also a protest - there are still battles to be fought, especially when it comes to discrimination in the workplace. Nobody...
Working longer, for less... Not only are we all working longer hours, but we’re also staying in work for longer too. The pension age has just risen yet again, and this time women are taking the hit as the state pension age raises from 60 to 66 in...
Physical contact in the workplace is a very high-profile topic among bosses, workers, and HR departments at the moment. On the back of two very public controversies, where men in positions of power got a little bit too ‘touchy-feely’ with their...
March 8th 2019 is International Women's Day . This year, the campaign theme is #BalanceForBetter, following 2018's #PressForProgress. International Women's Day (IWD) has occurred for well over a century and the day is an opportunity to...
Having been in Chelmsford looking after our clients for over 250 years we always knew it’s the place to be, both to live and to work. In last week’s Sunday Times in an article entitled ‘Going Places’ , Chelmsford was described as...
The National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates are expected to increase as of April 2019. Why does it matter? The National Living Wage (applicable for workers aged 25 and over) will increase by 4.9% from £7.83 to £8.21 with effect from 1 April 2019. NMW...
From 6 April 2019, the Employment Rights Act 1996 (Itemised Pay Statement) (Amendment) (No 2) Order 2018 and Employment Rights Act 1996 (Itemised Pay Statement) (Amendment) Order 2018 will come into force and introduce specific requirements in relation to...
The #TimesUp campaign has captured headlines with its push for greater diversity and equality in Hollywood and the entertainment sector, but these shifting attitudes are mirrored in legislative changes in the UK which will affect employers in the coming...
Profits have taken a tumble at fashion retailer Ted Baker after staff made allegations of inappropriate behaviour against founder Ray Kelvin, who has now taken a voluntary leave of absence while investigations take place. The news follows hard on the...
The UK Government published its "Good Work Plan". While the changes it sets out are not insignificant, it is worth noting that it does not contain clear proposals on the most controversial recommendations made earlier this year: There is...
The latest developments in the gig economy row The number of companies being held to account by their employees/contract workers is growing. First, Deliveroo and Uber were put through the legal mill and their workers gained a slew of rights and...
Are the NHS, the Fire Service and the Police doing all they can to protect first responders? It seems inconceivable to most of us that anyone would wantonly attack, injure or in any other way assault a nurse, fire officer or police officer. Yet every day...
The government's plan to make termination payments in excess of £30,000 subject to employer national insurance contributions (NICs) has been delayed for a second time and will now take effect from April 2020. The government has recently made...
The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018 is due to come into effect in 2020. The new legislation gives employees who lose a child under the age of 18 or a stillborn from 24 weeks of pregnancy, a day one right to two weeks leave. Subject to...
Employment disputes can be expensive and time-consuming to resolve, causing a lot of stress and hassle to both employers and employees if they are not handled correctly. However, in many cases, employment disputes can be resolved quickly in a way that works...
The law All employees are entitled to be accompanied by a trade union official or a colleague at any disciplinary or grievance hearing. You do not have to recognise a union and your employee doesn't need to be a member of it either. You also do...
If you think you’re the victim of constructive dismissal, then you’re in the right place. We’ve put together a guide to tell you exactly what constructive dismissal is, and how you can deal with the consequences of what can be a very...
Liverpudlian comedian Adam Rowe won the recent ‘Dave’s funniest joke of the fringe’ at the Edinburgh Festival with… "Working at the Jobcentre has to be a tense job - knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the...
Background Under UK employment law, the two year service requirement is a key milestone in an employment relationship. With some well-known exceptions, known as “automatic unfair dismissal”, it is only at this point that employees can bring...
Maternity leave is an important period for all working mums. It gives women an opportunity to prepare for the birth, then bond with and care for the child during the first days, weeks, and months of its life. Here, we take a look at what rights you have when...
If you have received a criminal conviction or caution in the past, you may be concerned about your future career prospects. You may be concerned as to whether employers have the right to retract a job offer if they find out about your past conviction or...
The summer of 2018 is already being compared with the long, hot scorcher of 1976. Records have been broken across the UK, the words ‘hose-pipe ban’ are being whispered, and we’re all suffering from sleep deprivation due to night-time...
In a case against Barclays Bank PLC brought by 126 Claimants (who were either applicants for employment or employees of the Bank) it was alleged that they had been sexually assaulted by a doctor who was carrying out a medical assessment and examination on...
Mention spies and you may think of James Bond scaling a building in the dead of night, but when it comes to commercial espionage it’s more likely to be Jim in product development, who has a new job with a competitor, or a cyber specialist sitting a...
The Supreme Court has handed down its eagerly anticipated Judgment on the employment status of plumber, Gary Smith. In a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court has dismissed Pimlico Plumbers' appeal and has upheld previous rulings that Mr Smith was in fact...
With the 2018 World Cup about to kick-off in Moscow, football fans will have their eye on the ball, whether for England or their home country and following England’s 2-1 win in its warm-up friendly with Nigeria, the tactics for the team are likely to...
The Windrush immigration scandal has highlighted many stories of individual suffering from people who believed they were legitimately living and working in the UK. Many have lost their jobs and while it may seem employers have been unduly harsh, under the...
It took nearly 100 years, but in July 2017 women were afforded the right to fight on the frontline. It is a glaring reality that men still make up a significant proportion of those serving in the British Armed Forces, with women making up only...
Tonight is the cut off point for companies to publish their gender pay gap figures. The government has issued a final warning to businesses to report their gender pay gap by midnight tonight or could face legal action. To date over 6,000 companies have...
Income tax and national insurance contributions (“NICs”) must be paid on all payments in lieu of notice (“PILONs”) with effect from 6 April 2018 From 6 April 2018 all payments in lieu of notice (only where employment...
The Department for Work and Pensions has published statutory rates for maternity pay, paternity pay, shared parental pay, adoption pay, sick pay and national living wage for 2018-19. The new figures will come into force in...
The Government has announced new limits on the maximum compensation that the Employment Tribunal can award for unfair dismissal claims. The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2018 will change the calculation of statutory redundancy payments and the...
In a recent news article published by the BBC they reported that Tesco is facing Britain's largest ever equal pay claim and a possible bill running to £4bn. Many thousands of women who work in Tesco stores could be entitled to receive back pay...
There are certain criteria that need to be met in order for a redundancy to be considered a fair dismissal. Areas to consider when being made redundant include: redundancy pay, notice period, consultation with your employer and time off to find a new job. If...
With just one month to go before Christmas, we’re all looking forward to a few days off with family, friends, or just curled up with a good film and a loved one for the day. However, life still goes on (even on Christmas Day) and there are plenty of...
Childcare is, after your mortgage or rent payments, one of the biggest family expenditures. For working parents, finding someone they can trust to look after young children while they work can be incredibly difficult, and very expensive. While the government...
We haven’t even shut the door on Europe yet, and already farms are finding it difficult to hire foreign seasonal workers for next year’s harvests. Since Brexit was announced, there have been plenty of divisive headlines about crops potentially...
Following the allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein and other leading figures, businesses need to make sure they have clear policies to inspire the right culture in their workplace. The initial revelations about the Hollywood mogul...
Law Under s.98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 1996), a dismissal for misconduct will be unfair unless: • The employer believed the employee to be guilty of misconduct. ...
In the workplace, we use many forms of technology to communicate and the issue of privacy has been at the centre of discussions for many years. Technology in the past two decades has advanced considerably and sending emails is now the predominant source of...
The ET has allowed a claim to be presented out of time despite the claim initially being rejected to pay the issue fee. This decision follows the Supreme Court's judgment handed down on 26 July 2017 which ruled that the Employment Tribunals and...
In Gascoigne v Addison Lee Ltd, the employment tribunal has ruled that a cycle courier working for Addison Lee was a worker under the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the Employment Rights Act 1996, not a self-employed contractor. This decision follows...
The legal minimum age a child can work is 13 years old as a part-time worker, however there are exceptions to when a child can work below this age. For children who are between 13 and not more than 16 years of age, there are restrictions to where and...
Following the introduction of the Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunals Fees Order 2013 ("the Order"), the number of employment tribunal cases have been said to have decreased by 70%. Why? It is likely due to potential...
Under the Equal Pay Act 1970, men and women who do the same or broadly similar work, or work that is found to be of equal value in terms of effort or skill, are entitled to the same employment contract terms, including pay. The provisions under this law as...
It is imperative that employees complete both the ACAS Conciliation Form and Claim Form correctly when pursuing a claim against a former employer. Any error can become a major issue when applying to the employment tribunal, as demonstrated in a recent case...
As Wimbledon begins there is no doubt that the tournament will be full of surprises. However, as an employer have you considered what surprises your business could face during times of sporting events? As an employer, are your employees allowed to have time...
Accurate calculations of the National Minimum Wage continue to cause headaches for employers, with an employment tribunal acknowledging the complexity, saying there is no single key to unlock every case. Recently, unintentional underpayments in staff pay...
Understanding of mental health issues is high on the agenda, thanks to the involvement of the younger members of the Royal family in the Heads Together awareness campaign which has seen the # oktosay hashtag trending. Their activity gave an extra boost to...
A report by media lawyers has concluded that whistleblowers need better legal protection because they are far easier to identify in the modern digital age. Successive laws brought into force in recent years have also been responsible for undermining their...
ACAS have reported that the Employment Trends Survey, which covers 319 businesses and a total workforce of 1.9 million people, found that almost half of firms (46%) report that their business has been affected as a direct result of the regulations. ...
One year after the introduction of tough new health and safety sentencing guidelines, a series of high profile cases show that courts are not holding back when it comes to imposing the higher fines, which can be directly linked to a corporate...
Constant changes and increasing complexity have helped make employment law a frontline challenge for business and this year looks set to continue the trend. The first weeks of January saw Maggie Dewhurst, a bike courier with City Sprint, winning her case to...
In a recent news article it was reported that French employees will have the right to avoid emails outside their usual working hours. The new law, which has been dubbed the "right to disconnect", came into force on 1 January. Companies with more...
As the countdown to the festive season gets underway, employers juggling the pre-Christmas workload need to ensure workers are enabled to take their rest breaks. The warning comes after an employer was found to have failed to take the necessary steps to...
According to a new study report on by the BBC , sleep-deprived workers are costing the UK economy £40bn a year. The calculation is based on tired employees being less productive or absent from work altogether. Research firm Rand Europe, which...
The High Court held in the case of Bellman v Northampton Recruitment that a company would not be vicariously liable for injuries caused by an employee after a work Christmas party had ended. The case involved an assault of a manager by a director after a...
The news that Airbnb has adopted a new anti-discrimination code, following accusations of racism by hosts on the home-sharing site, highlights the growing challenge in managing this increasingly sensitive issue. Other recent headlines have ranged from...
Research from Deloitte has said the gender pay gap in the UK may not close until 2069 based on current salary progression. Deloitte has said that the current hourly pay gap between men and women of 9.4% was narrowing by just two-and-a-half pence a year. It...
The employer advice group ACAS, has suggested that negative attitudes towards visible tattoos are outdated and could be causing employers to miss out on top staff by rejecting candidates with tattoos. A Yougov poll in 2015 suggested that nearly a fifth of...
The Government is to offer a £2,000 levy to businesses that take on teenagers, care leavers and those with special educational needs as apprentices. Under the plans, small businesses will be subsidised with 90% of the costs of providing...
A survey undertaken by the BBC suggests that more than half of women say that they have been sexually harassed at work. To some extremes, parcels containing sex toys left at a work desk by a male colleague, a senior boss telling an employee that he wanted...
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK’s unemployment rate has fallen to 1.65 million in the March-to-May period. This is down 54,000 from the previous quarter. The number of people in work rose by 176,000, with the...
The company that pays its staff to sleep Numerous studies have shown a correlation between sleep deprivation and poor employee performance in the office, with businesses facing the consequences that a lack of sleep has on productivity and...
British workers take, on average, more than four times as many sick days as in other Western European countries. This equates to nine days sick leave each year, resulting in an annual cost to UK employers of about £29 billion in lost...
The conciliation service Acas has said that firms should be flexible with staff during the Euro 2016 football tournament. A number of games in the tournament, which begins on 10 June, will be played in the daytime. Acas has...
The recent conviction of a UK business owner for a human trafficking offence has been a wake-up call to big businesses to carefully monitor their supply chain, if they are to avoid being connected to slave labour unwittingly. But with the requirements of...
In Private Medicine Intermediaries Ltd and others v Hodkinson UKEAT/0134/15, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ("EAT") considered whether an employee was constructively unfairly dismissed when her employer raised written concerns with her...
Some commercial organisations may not be aware of the effect which the new Modern Slavery Act 2015 (the 'Act') will have on them. Section 54 of the Act now requires large organisations in the UK to produce a statement setting out what...
Employers are on frost alert, following the news that a home care worker has won her claim for damages after slipping on ice and breaking her wrist when visiting a client. The ruling by the Supreme Court means that employers who expect staff to work...
Recent news headlines have warned employees that social media chat and email conversations at work are open to being read by the boss, following a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. But experts say that the headline writers have missed the...
Employers can now legally snoop through your private messages that you send via webmail accounts and online chat software, including Facebook Messenger, iMessage and WhatsApp if the device used is owned by your employer, EU judges this week ruled. The...
Although from the title of this article you may believe that 'Equal Pay Day' sounds like a day to be celebrated, it is actually the day on which men (on average) have already earned what a woman will earn (on average) in a year. From the 9th November...
Companies wanting to exploit the current trend of moving from office-based businesses to more mobile ones will need to take a recent ECJ decision into consideration before changing their approach. The ECJ held that the time spent by workers, who do not have...
Businesses will welcome helpful guidelines provided by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on how much involvement and influence HR should have in disciplinary investigations. What is crucial is that HR limits advice to questions of law, procedure and...
Changes to the CDM Regulations are likely to affect the work of any person who is involved in the supervision of contractors in construction work. The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/51) came into force on 6th April...
Two high profile health and safety court rulings have caught the headlines this month, but the penalties imposed reflect the expected shift towards higher tariffs and businesses need to sit up and take notice say experts. First, fashion retailer Hugo Boss...
Under plans announced in the recent Budget, workers aged over 25 in the UK will be paid a minimum of £7.20 an hour from April 2016, rising to £9 by 2020. Four major care home providers have commented this could cost the care sector £1bn by...
With the summer holiday season at its peak, employers have a hot-spot to watch out for back home, with the news that they must permit holiday entitlement to be carried over for up to 18 months if it has been unused due to sickness. It follows the decision...
A worker who was dismissed after failing to follow new health and safety guidelines has won his claim for unfair dismissal in the Court of Appeal. And the decision is a warning to companies that it is not enough to issue new procedures and risk assessment...
The email was sent to 48 year old James Allen, a former serviceman from Devon, who was described in the letter as ‘an old, aesthetically challenged guy with no teeth’. Written by the company director of a window and conservatory manufacturer,...
And as the deadline looms, businesses are being warned to make sure they’re prepared, or risk claims for discrimination by fathers seeking to share the time with their newborn. Paid Shared Parental Leave is a new right available to parents...
An employee has failed in an attempt to have the content of personal messages he sent from his work email account excluded from a disciplinary investigation. The messages were discovered during an investigation into Mr Atkinson, the former director of...
What is auto-enrolment? From a date after October 2012, businesses will be required to automatically enrol eligible “jobholders” in a pension scheme. A “jobholder” will include permanent, fixed-term and temporary employees, as well...
An Employment Tribunal has recently decided that an individual can be deemed an 'employee' even where they have declined to be paid for their services. In Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills v Knight, Mrs Knight was the...
The National Living Wage has been catching headlines since Chancellor George Osborne announced it last summer, but the Government’s target of £9 per hour by 2020 has overshadowed the detail, and many businesses remain unaware of the...
The facts of this case led the court to consider the dichotomy between two legal principles: the principle that an agreement in resolution of a dispute should be upheld against the principle of restraint of trade. In such scenarios, the onus is on the...
Commonly, work place injuries relate to musculoskeletal disorders such as ligament and back injuries, skin diseases, hearing problems and injuries from slips and falls. The figures for the year 2012-2013 show that of the 610,000 people who were...
What is administration? Administration is the procedure by which a company that is, or is likely to become, insolvent can be reorganised or have its assets sold for the benefit of creditors. When a company goes into administration, an insolvency...
Understanding the regulator’s approach to the enforcement and prosecution of environmental offences should enable businesses to minimise their risk of being prosecuted. It should also help: Reduce the level of any penalties if the business is...
Why is it important to follow the law when dismissing an employee? Dismissing an employee for a reason other than one allowed by law, without following the correct procedure or giving adequate notice, may lead to a claim for unfair or wrongful dismissal...