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Pod 6, The Engine Rooms, Station Road
Chepstow
Monmouthshire

01633 730907

For more than 10 years we have provided companies of all sizes and in a variety of sectors with uncomplicated, innovative and affordable human resources advice and on-site support ensuring that your people are an asset to your company and not a liability.

News

With the National Minimum Wage (NMW) now almost fifteen years old, and with another increase pending on 1st April 2017 HMRC have issued a list of the most elaborate excuses they've been given by employers for not paying the appropriate rates:

Happy New Year and Some Employment Law Changes

Alan Kitto

Hi and Happy New Year to you, we wish you and your business every success in 2024 and rest assured we’ll be here when we’re needed.

Much as the current Government has until 28th January 2025 to call a general election, commentators are all pointing towards the date being in September or October 2024.

A change in Government is likely to see some impactful changes to employment law; Labour for example has pledged to remove the current two year service requirement for employees to bring unfair dismissal (and constructive unfair dismissal) claims, meaning employers will need to tighten up their recruitment and selection practices to ensure they’re offering roles to those with the right skills and attitudes, tighten up their induction and on-boarding to be able to properly assess new starters against the appropriate criteria and tighten up their performance management processes to be able to deal fairly with under-performers.

Potentially gone will be the days when an employee can be dismissed, without process, with up to two years of service, simply because the employer wants to. It’s not clear how long an employer will have to be able to do this, but it is unlikely to be more than a year and highly likely to be as little as between three and six months.

Notwithstanding this. there are some employment law changes that are effective from 1st January 2024.

  1. Employees will have the right to bring claims for indirect discrimination by association, where someone who does not hold the relevant protected characteristic but suffers the same disadvantage at the hands of an employer policy, criterion or practice as these who do.

  2. The Equality Act’s definition of a disability includes reference to an employee being able to carry out normal day to day activities.  Guidance has been issued to include ‘the ability to participate fully and effectively in working life on and equal basis with other workers’ as normal day to day activities.

  3. Direct discrimination protection has been extended to cover statements made about not wanting to recruit (or promote etc.) people with certain protected characteristics, even if there is no active recruitment process ongoing and no identifiable victim.

  4. Sex discrimination protection has been extended to cover breastfeeding.

Later this year, in fact from the start of April 2024:

  1. Carer’s Leave becomes a day one right. This applies to anyone who has a dependent with the long-term care need and who wants to take time off work to provide or care for that dependant. The allowance is one week of unpaid leave er annum and can be in consecutive or con-consecutive full or half days. The notice required to request this will be the same for booking holidays (i.e. twice the long of time requested - two days for a day, four days for two days etc.). Employers will have some rights to postpone Carer’s Leave where this is essential.

  2. The special protection from redundancy that currently applies to employees on maternity leave will be extended to be eighteen months from the estimated week of childbirth or the exact date of birth providing the employee provides this during maternity leave. For adoption leave the protected period will cover eighteen months from placement. There is similar protection, albeit with some caveats, for those taking shared parental leave, not already protected by having been on maternity or adoption leave. This final wording of these Regulations is subject to change.

  3. In addition to employees being able to make two requests for flexible working in any twelve-month period, it will become a day one right, meaning employees will no longer need to have twenty-six weeks service to be able to make a request.

We’ll keep to you posted with any other changes as they are announced; if you have any questions or need any help with anything mentioned above, please get in touch.

Have a great 2024.