At the end of last week the HMRC published more details on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme announced on 20 March, available here.   Our detailed briefing available here sets out the key points from the new guidance and discusses some of the issues and unanswered questions that arise.  Of course the definitive position will only … Read more

All employers will clearly be concerned about the impact on their staff and business of the COVID-19 outbreak.  In addition to ensuring employees have a safe place to work, employers will need to facilitate remote working where possible and devise plans to deal with possible resourcing and supply chain issues, including considering the implications of … Read more

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the Government Equalities Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have this morning suspended enforcement of the gender pay gap deadlines for this reporting year (2019/20). The decision means that there will be no expectation on employers to report their data.  See the announcement here. Read more

Employers should prepare now for the following changes coming into force in April: From 6 April 2020 employees will be entitled to two weeks’ statutory parental bereavement leave following the death of a child under 18 or a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy.  There is also a right to statutory pay for those with 26 … Read more

Last summer the Court of Appeal ruled that an employer’s failure to enhance shared parental pay in the same way as enhanced maternity pay was not unlawful direct or indirect sex discrimination or unequal pay (see here).  The Court considered that a woman on maternity leave was not in comparable circumstances to someone on shared … Read more

The Government intends to make the following changes to statutory rates and tribunal compensation from April 2020: From 6 April 2020 the cap on the unfair dismissal compensatory award will increase from £86,444 to £88,519 and the cap on weekly pay (used to calculate the unfair dismissal basic award and statutory redundancy pay) will increase … Read more

A number of recent cases (see our blog post here) have grappled with the question of what amounts to a protected philosophical belief for the purposes of discrimination law, reflecting a growing trend of claimants seeking to push the boundaries (in some cases because of a lack of eligibility to claim unfair dismissal). Previous case … Read more

Employers should take steps to ensure that personnel who investigate potential misconduct are aware of the need to provide accurate information to the decision-maker (and the employee) and, importantly, to update this information if necessary prior to the disciplinary decision. In Uddin v London Borough of Ealing, the investigating officer had included in his recommendation … Read more