It was a mistake, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held in Walker v Sita Information Networking Computing Ltd, for an Employment Tribunal to say that a claimant was not disabled because there was no identifiable or recognisable pathological or mental cause for his “constellation of symptoms”. The Tribunal had been wrong to concentrate on the fact…
HM Revenue & Customs has announced a concession for employers of fewer than 50 employees allowing them to delay the full implementation of the new “Real Time Information” PAYE reporting scheme until 5 October 2013. Until then, smaller employers may provide the information when they do their usual payroll run, so long as it is…
I suspect that, if asked, most people would assume that covert recordings cannot be admitted in evidence, based on general principles of fairness and natural justice. In Vaughan v London Borough Of Lewisham & Ors the Employment Appeal Tribunal considered this question. Ms Vaughan, who had raised a number of claims against Lewisham, made a…
Last month I commented on the case of Simmonds v Milford Club in which it was thought appropriate to revisit previous warnings if they were “manifestly inappropriate” when considering the fairness of a misconduct dismissal, Davies v Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council emphasises that this approach is very much the exception to the rule. In Davies…
Employment Tribunals have a limited power to extend the three-months’ time limit for bringing unfair dismissal claims where it is “not reasonably practicable” for a claimant to make a claim in time. In the case of El -Kholy v Rentokil Initial Facilities Services (UK) Ltd the Employment Appeal Tribunal reminds us that, where the reason…
Redundancy selection can be a tricky business; faced with having to choose between a number of employees how do you make sure you do so fairly? Well, the standard advice is to establish a set of objective criteria and apply those. And very good advice it is too, but Mental Health Care (UK) Ltd v…
The government has published “Employment Law 2013: progress on reform” which notes both that in the UK, “burdens from employment law are low by international standards”, and that there is a perception that employment regulation is a problem (perhaps fuelled by exercises such as the “Red Tape challenge“?), leading to a situation where “fear of…
Prior to the Equality Act 2010, it had been recognised for quite a while that acts of victimisation taking place after the end of the employment relationship were unlawful under the preceding legislation (See Rhys Harper v Relaxion Group PLC [2003] UKHL 33). This would cover, for example, refusing to give an employee a reference…
In Christou(1) Ward(2) v London Borough of Haringey the Court of Appeal upheld what may seem the surprising decision that an employer could revisit an earlier disciplinary decision to give a written warning for misconduct and decide to dismiss the employee after all. It would not be wise, however, to treat this as any kind…