In July 2013 the Government introduced fees for bringing employment tribunal claims for the first time. You may recall from our last blog about tribunal fees in June 2014 that Rebecca Hutchinson reported a dramatic drop in the number of claims being brought at the tribunals as a consequence of the Read more…
The law on protection for “whistleblowers” is contained within the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. A couple of years ago the Government made some amendments to this Act, the most important of which was widely reported to be a new requirement that disclosures needed to be made in the “public Read more…
It is a legal requirement for all employees to be provided with a statement of employment particulars within the first two months of employment. For most employers this statement is either incorporated into or serves as the contract of employment. However, there are plenty of employers who do not get Read more…
The case of Lock and others v British Gas Trading Ltd has returned to an Employment Tribunal, which has ruled it necessary to add words to the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR) to make it compliant with the EU Working Time Directive. You may recall that the European Court of Read more…
The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill 2014-2015 (SBEEB) , currently going through the House of Lords, proposes a ban on employers using “exclusivity clauses” in zero hour contracts. The legislation will allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to ensure that employers do not try to circumvent the Read more…
It is common for bonus schemes to be conditional upon a number of factors including financial and personal performance, the employee not being under notice when the bonus is due and sometimes having a clean disciplinary record and a good attendance record. Is an employer free to choose whatever conditions Read more…
The Government has just announced the new maximum for the compensatory award in unfair dismissal claims and the new cap for a weeks’ pay to be used for calculating statutory redundancy pay and certain tribunal awards. From 6 April 2015, the cap on a weeks’ pay will rise to £475 Read more…
Many managers and people working in HR will have grown used to the concept of age discrimination over the last ten years or so since regulations came into effect making it unlawful to discriminate in employment on the grounds of age. As with many changes in the law, when the Read more…
You may recall the introduction of “punitive fines” for employers who lose Employment Tribunal cases with “aggravating features” in April last year. What will undoubtedly be welcome news for employers now, however, is the fact that absolutely no awards have been made since the legislation took effect. That’s a period of nine Read more…
HR professionals will be familiar with the situation where new contracts of employment are sent out to employees which are never returned. This creates difficulties when the employer wants to rely on any changes in the new contract. The question then becomes: is the employee bound by the new terms? Read more…