In the Irish case of Kenny v Minister for Justice, female civil servants carrying out clerical duties for the national police claimed that they were paid less than male employees carrying out the same work. These male employees were assigned to specific clerical posts reserved for members of the police, called ‘designated` posts, in an effort to reduce police numbers. The employees brought an eq...
In its response to its Consultation on Modern Workplaces the government has proposed extending the right to request flexible working to all employees with at least 26 weeks` continuous employment. The government has also proposed replacing the statutory procedure for considering requests with a new duty on employers to act reasonably within a reasonable period. In response to these proposals, A...
Many of our Local Authority clients participate in joint working arrangements with other Local Authorities, in an effort to, for example, create economies of scale, share costs or streamline services. We have been scrutinising the arrangements which govern these joint working relationships for our clients, considering in particular the decision making arrangements used by Local Authorities working together. The structure of these arrangements may not be quite as straightforward as it used to be following a 2010 Court of Appeal ruling....
On Sunday 3rd March Clarkslegal hosted an afternoon tea party to support the local elderly community, on behalf of our nominated charity Contact the Elderly...
Two recent cases have explored the circumstances in which a Tribunal can examine the validity of a previous warning, which formed part of the employer`s decision to dismiss an employee. The Court of Appeal confirmed in the case of Davies v Sandwell that only in limited circumstances will a tribunal be entitled to `re-open` an employer`s decision to issue a final warning, which the employer later...
Following consultation the government has decided that the 90 days consultation period is not usually required. Reducing the minimum consultation period from 90 days to 45 days will enable employers to be more flexible and aid them by saving administrative and salary costs. It was seen to be important to allow employers to restructure more quickly especially at a time when the future of the company could be at risk....
Sustainable development ("SD") is a term most individuals and companies will be familiar with, particularly when working with or for public sector organisations....
The government is intending to introduce a number of changes to whistleblowing law through the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill ("ERRB") but whether this will prompt employers to encourage employees to blow the whistle remains to be seen. Whilst whistleblowers are protected against detriment and dismissal as a result of blowing the whistle, they often suffer in more subtle ways such as ostra...
On Saturday 23rd February Clarkslegal staff volunteered at a local Cardiff supermarket to help boost donations to the Cardiff Foodbank, one of our three nominated charities for our centenary year. Cardiff Foodbank is a part of the National Foodbank Network. It is a project to help and support those suffering financial hardship and who are facing the reality of being unable to feed themselves or their families....
In the case of Hill v Governing Body of Great Tey Primary School it was found that a Claimant`s dismissal was procedurally unfair. The tribunal calculated the remedy on the basis that the Claimant`s employment would have terminated in any event two months later (had a proper procedure been followed). An 80% reduction on account of contributory fault was also applied, leaving the claimant with the...
In celebration of our centenary year, we are entering three corporate teams in the Reading Half Marathon, on Sunday 17th March. The corporate relay aims to promote healthy workforces and enables companies to enter teams of four who each run approximately three miles of the thirteen mile course....
Question: Would public sector employees who are subject to industry or sector wide negotiated terms continue to be entitled to benefit from increases in pay which are negotiated under those terms after they have transferred to the private sector? Background of the case: The Claimants were originally employed by London Borough of Lewisham. These Claimants had a contractual entitlement to pay i...
No, this is nothing to do with the Pope`s resignation last week. In Heafield v Times Newspaper Ltd, Mr Heafield pursued claims for harassment on the grounds of his religion on the basis that his line manager`s comment "can anyone tell me what`s happening to the f***ing pope", which was shouted in a pressured newsroom, was intended to deride and insult his religion and in the alternative, the com...
On Tuesday 12th February, Clarkslegal took part in the 2013 Reading Pancake Race, along with twenty six other local businesses, in support of Launchpad....
In response to recent European Court of Human Rights judgment about religious rights in the workplace, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has this week published good practice guidance for employers on how to comply with the Court`s judgment. This guidance gives various examples of requests that might be made by employees and what it regards to be an appropriate response. Two such exam...
The DWP plans to consult in March 2013 on several changes to the auto-enrolment regime. The changes to be introduced are intended to simplify technical aspects of the legislation, reflecting the lessons learned so far from how the regime has operated in practice. Three specific areas have been singled out by the DWP: To simplifying the process of assessing the workforce. Making it easier fo...
Background The Employment Equality Age Regulations 2006 ("the Age Regulations") provide that a person will be directly discriminated against if they are treated less favourably than a comparator on the grounds of the person`s age and the treatment cannot be objectively justified. The Age Regulations also provide that a person will be indirectly discriminated against if a provision, criterion o...
Michael Sippitt, Chairman of Clarkslegal LLP is challenging entrepreneurs and financial investors to get serious about developing environmental technologies across the Commonwealth, as he introduced the Commonwealth Environmental Investment Platform (the CEIP), at the Green Growth Road Show in Cape Town, South Africa, on Wednesday, 13 February....
Education is big business. The last two decades have seen rapid growth in the for-profit education industry. Apollo Group, a Nasdaq listed for-profit education industry heavyweight which is also part of the S&P 500 group of companies, and the owner of such brands as the University of Phoenix in the US and BPP University College in the UK, saw consistent exponential growth from its inception on Nasdaq. Kaplan, another for-profit education provider wholly owned by the Washington Post had revenues of US$2.5b in 2011, whilst DeVry Inc., listed on the NYSE, had a market capitalisation of US$1.62b at the time of writing. The sheer scale of these three examples serves to show just how big the industry is....
The recent case of West London Mental Health NHS Trust v Chhabra confirms the need to exercise great care to ensure that disciplinary procedures are not contractually binding on employers. If a court is able to construe a disciplinary procedure as having contractual effect, a breach of the procedure could lead to the employee seeking a court injunction preventing the disciplinary procedure going...