A number of employment law changes will, or are expected to, come into force in April in the UK that employers should make note of. We have summarized them here for reference.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that a single redundancy required some form of wider workforce consultation, and that this should be the norm for all individual redundancy exercises. Nevertheless, taking into account the facts of this case and long-established case law and rules on collective consultation, we consider that the main point is that consultation takes place with affected employee(s) at a time when it could make a difference.
Employees will have a statutory right to a week’s unpaid leave each year to care for a dependent from 6 April 2024. The Carer’s Leave Regulations 2024 have been laid before Parliament and are expected to be made shortly. They set out details of the scheme intended under the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, as previously reported.
Employers will need to decide whether they wish to enhance the new rights, for example, by paying for some or all of the leave, as part of an employee benefits package to recruit, retain, and support employees with caring responsibilities. Some employers may already offer a form of contractual carer’s leave.
Welcome to the first edition of our quarterly HR Privacy newsletter brought to you by the London employment team designed to keep you updated with key cases, legal developments, trends and news relating to UK and EU-wide employment / HR data privacy matters.
Several new employment measures have become law, dealing with redundancy protection for mothers and those returning from family leave, as well as creating new rights to carer’s and neonatal leave. There is also a new right to the allocation of tips. However, the rights might not come into force for a year or two, and some of the detail of the rights remains to be confirmed.
In an article for Compliance and Risk Journal, John Bracken considers the ever-changing employment law environment, highlighting recent and upcoming court decisions and legislative developments.
In an article for PLC Magazine, Kim Sartin, Zelander Gray and Sam Rayner look at how employers that are considering venturing into the metaverse will need to address new challenges that arise out of employees working in a virtual environment.
After a long period in which the UK government has promised several employment law changes contained in an Employment Bill without bringing forward such a Bill, it has now announced it is supporting certain private members’ bills which include developments in these areas. These include expanding the right to request flexible working, a new right to request more predictable working conditions, a number of changes to family leave entitlements, and protection for those facing harassment by third parties such as customers at work.
The European Parliament adopted a proposal on 2 February seeking potentially far-reaching changes to the current European Works Council (EWC) Directive. These include strengthening the information and consultation rights of EWCs and improving enforcement by introducing GDPR-level fines for non-compliance and a risk of injunctions for failure to inform and consult.
A recent EAT decision has held that an employee cannot settle statutory employment claims arising from events that have not yet happened. In doing so, it departed from existing case law that indicated it was possible to settle such claims in some circumstances.