Article Category: Employment Law & HR – Insight & Opinion

The Pensions Ombudsman (PO) recently made a decision, during an appeal, on a settlement agreement that included pension benefits. The agreement promised to increase a Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) member’s pension and to allow payment of full pension in the future from the member’s 55th birthday. In this case, an appeal was made by an… Read more »

Whilst visiting a school I came across an interesting point of law relating to the Data Protection Act 1998 and the rights of parents to see information held on a pupil’s file. A parent had requested a copy of their own child’s GCSE results. The Act requires written consent from the pupil to release the… Read more »

As MPs demand urgent government action to tackle a ‘shocking and unacceptable’ rise in pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace, I consider the issues facing both employees and employers when managing the combination of motherhood and working life. Is more legislation the only answer? My twin gave birth to her first baby seven months… Read more »

From April 2017 major changes will be introduced to the way in which the government funds apprenticeships. These changes will be known as the apprenticeship levy. Some employers will now be required to contribute and there will be changes to the funding for apprenticeship training. This will be especially relevant to organisations that have a… Read more »

In any redundancy process, an employer should identify any suitable alternative employment and where possible offer this to the affected employees. It is therefore necessary to consider whether a move to another location can be considered a suitable alternative to being made redundant. If an employer fails to offer suitable employment as an alternative to… Read more »

According to research from accountancy firm PwC sick days are costing UK employers about £29 billion a year. Sick leave accounts for nearly 90% of absence bills with other types of leave, e.g. compassionate leave and dependants leave, taking up the other 10%. Currently employees who are off sick from work can ‘self certify’ for… Read more »

It has been reported recently that the BBC are advertising vacancies setting out specific requirements on the ethnicity of applicants. Allegedly two white applicants have been turned down for a 12 month trainee role as junior scriptwriters because the BBC wanted people from “ethnic minority backgrounds”. The BBC stated it was to address an “under-representation… Read more »

Since the passage of the European Communities Act 1972, UK courts and tribunals must interpret national law in accordance with European law. As the EU membership debate rages on, we’ve set out eight of the key European cases that have had a major impact on UK employment law. No cap on discrimination compensation Marshall v… Read more »

This week ACAS have reported that workplace bullying is growing in the UK and that many people are too scared to speak out about the issue. They have received approximately 20,000 calls in the past year related to bullying and harassment, with some callers reporting that workplace bullying caused them to self-harm or consider suicide…. Read more »

Business Minister Nick Boles has announced today that 115 companies have failed to pay their workers the national minimum wage and they’ve now been named and shamed in a list published on the gov.uk website. Retailer Monsoon Accessorize Ltd has topped the list for failing to pay £104,508 to 1,438 workers. We understand Monsoon have… Read more »