13 February 2012 #Employment
Following our previous blog announcing proposals to increase the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from 1 year to 2 years, the draft Unfair Dismissal and Statement of Reasons for Dismissal (Variation of Qualifying Period) Order 2012 has now been published.
As expected, the draft order provides that employees whose period of continuous employment began on or before 5th April 2012 remain subject to the existing one year qualifying period, thereafter the qualifying period will increase to 2 years.
Whilst the proposals are intended to reduce the number of Tribunal claims, there are concerns that it may in fact simply lead to an increase in those claims where there is no qualifying period, such as discrimination, whistleblowing and union related claims.