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We are delighted to announce that we have a new guest speaker at our Employment Law and Health and Safety workshop here at Elcons on Friday June 30^th 2017 at 10.00am

Danny Lacey CEO and Founder of Stada Video, will be delivering a short presentation on “How to grow your business through social media”.  Don’t miss out on listening to Danny who can only be described as a breath of fresh air and an inspiration to businesses.

Please reserve your place by e-mailing rachelh@elcons.co.uk. See you there!

The House of Lords confirmed that the WTR 1998 do not prevent workers taking statutory holiday while they are off sick. This means that workers on long-term sick leave can take holiday, and be paid for it whether or not they have exhausted their right to statutory and/or contractual sick pay.

On 8 June 2017, the Ministry of Justice published quarterly statistics for all tribunals, including the employment tribunal (ET), for the period January to March 2017. Key findings include:

• The number of single ET claims increased by 4%. The total number of multiple claims increased by 7%, however, the number of individual multiple claim cases actually fell by 23%.
• The number of single ET claims disposed of fell by 5%, leading to a 10% increase in the caseload of single cases outstanding. The number of multiple claims disposed of fell by 19%. The average time until disposal was 29 weeks for single claims (an increase of one week) and 206 weeks for multiple claims (an increase of 20 weeks). 28% of claims disposed of were conciliated by Acas, 11% were withdrawn and 8% were successful at hearing.
• Annual figures from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 show a 1% increase in single claims and an 8% increase in multiple claims compared with the previous year. The disposal of single claims decreased 4% over the year, and the disposal of multiple claims decreased by 11%.
• 63% of remission applications for issue fees were granted, down from 66%.
• 63% of ET issue fee requests were paid outright, while 29% were awarded either full or partial remission. 18% of hearing fee requests were paid outright and 15% were awarded full or partial remission.
• The total caseload outstanding is 272,032, with 96% of these relating to multiple claims.
• The number of ET sitting days has fallen by 15% since 2015/2016. The proportion of sittings by a salaried judge, rather than a fee-paid judge, has increased from 67% in 2013/2014 to 92% in 2016/2017. (In comparison, the average proportion of salaried judicial sittings across all other tribunals within HMCTS is 40%.)

All comparisons are by reference to the same quarter in 2016 (unless otherwise stated).

You need to consider Employment Status, Contract, Pension obligations, Holiday entitlement, National Minimum Wage etc – Elcons can help you with ALL of this!

Failing to abide by right to work rules, which determine an individual’s eligibility to work in the UK, costs organisations £50m in fines every year:- 2,943 initial civil penalties totalling £49,472,500 were dished out between July 2015 and July 2016

The Information Commissioner, has warned businesses that there’s no time to delay in preparing for “the biggest change to data protection law for a generation”.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced that the number of union members is at an all-time low of 6.2 million. According to the figures, union membership decreased by 275,000 in 2016

A tribunal has found that a male employee was discriminated against when his employer refused to allow him to take additional paternity leave at full pay:-  A female employee was contractually entitled to 15 weeks leave on full pay after the birth of the child but a man was only entitled to 2 wks paternity leave at SPP.

A long serving employee with a clean disciplinary record was dismissed as a result of comments made on Facebook, Personnel Today reports. Mrs Plant had her place of work and job title on her profile, and concerns had been raised by colleagues over comments she made, including describing her role as “general dogsbody” which the ET considered was “derogatory and insulting if not to the respondents certainly to her colleagues occupying the same position”. She also referred to her work as “that bloody place” and that she would “need to hurry up and sue them”. The employer had a clear policy in place, and in a disciplinary hearing and subsequent appeal, no adequate explanation for the comments was given. In Plant v API Microelectronics Ltd, the ET found that the dismissal, although it “may be seen as harsh” was still fair, as the comment was a clear breach of policy and dismissal fell within the range of reasonable responses.