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The End of Employment Tribunal Fees

26th July 2017

The Supreme Court has this week ruled that employment tribunal fees are unlawful. The government will now have to repay fees circa £32 million to claimants. We discuss how this changes everything. Employment tribunal fees were introduced in the summer of 2013 and since then any claimant has had to pay a fee to lodge […]

Uber decision: does it affect your business?

7th November 2016

There has been a lot of publicity over the preliminary hearing to decide the status of the Uber taxi drivers. Much of the publicity has reported the decision incorrectly, describing the drivers as employees. This was not the decision of the tribunal. The tribunal concluded that the drivers are workers. The decision (which is worth a […]

Should you pay for travel time to work?

4th February 2016

The ECJ decision in Federación de Servicios Privados del sindicato Comisiones obreras (CC.OO.) v Tyco Integrated Security SL, (to keep it short let’s call it the Tyco decision) made the headlines in the UK last Thursday. Rarely has an ECJ decision attracted so much publicity. But what does it mean for you?

Compulsory Living Wage from April 2016

8th July 2015

In his budget announced today, George Osborne set out plans to introduce the Living Wage. From April 2016, the National Minimum Wage will be replaced by the Living Wage. The current National Minimum Wage rate for adults over 21 is £6.50, rising to £6.70 in October. George Osborne’s announcement is for a Living Wage for over […]

Unfairly dismissed for smelling of alcohol

1st July 2015

Can you summarily dismiss an employee for smelling of alcohol? The answer is not as straightforward as you think and will depend to a great extent on the content of your policies and the way you apply them. In Mr McElroy v Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust, a judge found Mr McElroy to have been […]

Romance may not be dead, but boy can it cause trouble!

12th February 2015

With Valentine’s Day looming, we thought we needed to talk about the burning topic of office romances. You may think that the office affair is a bit of a cliché that only happens in films or in books, but with a quick scoot around the internet, you will find lots of articles covering everything from […]

Important decision on how you calculate holiday pay

10th November 2014

Last week, the Employment Appeals Tribunal published a decision on the calculation of holiday pay that made headline news (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29896810). The case, Bear Scotland and others, has confirmed that workers are entitled to be paid normal remuneration for their holiday and for four weeks of that holiday, normal remuneration includes non-guaranteed overtime. Unite claimed that […]

Rise in maximum award for unfair dismissal and week’s pay

10th April 2014

The employment tribunal compensation limits have risen under the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2014, reflecting an RPI rise of 3.2%. The maximum award for unfair dismissal is now the lower of 52 weeks’ pay or £76,574, where 52 weeks’ pay is 52 times one week’s actual gross pay for the employee at the time […]

Are employment lawyers going to be less busy from today?

29th July 2013

Today is an important day for employment lawyers, and for a large part of the working population and their employers, as any employee wishing to take their employer to a tribunal will now have to pay a fee of between £160 to £250 to lodge a claim and a further fee of between £230 to […]

Planning for the Olympics

19th June 2012

Unless you are completely disconnected from the TV, radio and news media, you will know that the Olympics 2012 is almost upon us. With the opening ceremony on 27th July and the closing ceremony on 12th August, it is likely that there will be a number of employees wanting to watch their national team compete […]