As is quite often the case in relation to building developments, a consultant will provide preliminary services to the developer in expectation of being awarded a contract to provide consultancy services for the entire project. In such circumstances, it can be difficult to ascertain who is liable for the cost of the consultant’s initial services, if the anticipated contract does not materialise....
It is important when deciding the criteria for bonus entitlement or when scoring employees during a redundancy exercise, that due consideration is given to whether an employee has been absent from work due to their disability....
In light of the controversy surrounding the payouts made to two former Tesco directors, there have been further calls , including from the City, for the notice periods in senior executives contracts to be reduced....
Unless you have no mobile phone or internet access, in which case you are probably unlikely to be reading this, you will be in a very small minority if you haven’t received a text message of this kind, or perhaps an automated call about PPI claims or some other “entitlement”. What these communications have in common is that they are almost always unsolicited, unwanted and very difficult to do anything about because the identity of the sender is either disguised or undisclosed, or there is no effective way given to opt out....
The Court of Appeal has given some useful guidance on when employees transfer under TUPE in a service provision change scenario: Rynda (UK) Ltd v Rhijnsburger [2015] EWCA Civ 75. This was a case concerning the transfer of a single employee....
When dealing with misconduct allegations, do you find that employees sometimes seek to provide explanations that are so hard to disprove or could require many weeks of investigation, that you feel like you have to give up on the matter, rather than risk a tribunal claim? Some recent guidance from the Court of Appeal...
In a case involving Ed Miliband, the GMB is appealing a judgment by an employment tribunal that it unlawfully discriminated against a GMB member and who worked for the union for his “left-wing democratic socialist beliefs”. The case, reported in The Times this week, is not the first case where such a political belief has been found to constitute a belief protected under the Equality Act....
The EAT has overruled a tribunal decision that the National Audit Office was entitled to rely on a general right to vary clause to reduce employees' entitlements without their consent....
There will be a very important international meeting next week, which could impact on UK strike laws in the longer term, dealing with the key question, “ Is there a right to strike?” The meeting, at which representatives of various governments, unions and employers organisations will be attending, including the CBI, will be at the United Nations in Geneva, where the UN agency for labour standards, the International Labour Organisation, meets. Clarkslegal attends the ILO’s annual conference on behalf of the CBI....
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) has recently held that varying employees’ contractual terms and conditions may amount to indirect age discrimination where those changes disadvantage older workers (Braithwaite and others v HCL Insurance BPO Services Ltd UKEAT/0152/14). In the Braithwaite case however, the EAT found that the changes made to employees’ contracts could be objectively justified as there were no less discriminatory ways of achieving the employer’s legitimate aim of reducing staffing costs....
According to Action for Smoking and Health, there were 2.1 million adults using e-cigarettes in the UK last year. E-cigarettes pose a number of problems for employers, in particular, whether they should be used in the workplace....
In view of the increased risk of fraud and following high profile cases, the Land Registry has introduced means to protect individuals and companies who own property (where the title is registered at the Land Registry) against fraudulent transactions taking place without their knowledge. ...
You cannot have escaped the recent judgment regarding Gordon Ramsay. For those who haven’t heard of him he is a celebrity restaurateur and the star of several TV food programmes including Hell’s Kitchen. ...
In the recent case of Group M UK Ltd v Cabinet Office [2014] EWHC 3863 (TCC), the High Court awarded a successful tenderer its costs of participating in the Cabinet Office’s successful application to lift the automatic suspension on the award of the contract....
The EAT has upheld an employment tribunal's decision that an employee had affirmed her employment contract and could not, therefore, succeed in a constructive dismissal claim....
MW High Tech Projects UK Ltd v Haase Environmental Consulting GmbH [2015] EWHC 152 (TCC)...
Just over a year ago, we reported that the collective redundancy case concerning the collapse of Woolworths, and which continues to cause huge concern to employers. The case was referred by the Court of Appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ)....
As we are all painfully aware, the relatively slow pace of growth in the UK economy is a continuing concern, as it touches all aspects of our daily lives. When it is then considered that 99.9% of the UK’s businesses are SMEs, small businesses are crucial for growth....
The coffee sector in the UK is booming and seems set to continue this trend in the near future. A recent report by Allegra World Coffee Portal predicts turnover in the coffee market will rise from £7.2 billion to reach £16.5 billion by 2020....
The new shared parental leave rules apply in respect of babies due on or after 5 April 2015, which happens to be Easter Sunday this year....