Employers dread receiving a claim form citing claims which have no teeth and ‘fishing’ for more information from the employer to inform their claims. Often, these claims lack any merit at all. But in some cases, getting hard data to back up anecdotal evidence can be impossible for an employee, especially when it comes to closely guarded information about pay. The EAT has recently looked at a request for supporting data in relation to an equal pay claim. This case sits against the backdrop of extensive mass equal pay litigation in recent times, originally in the public sector, for women in predominantly female roles who claim they do work of equal value to predominantly male roles within a business. Most recently, this mass litigation has moved into the private sector and supermarkets like Asda, Co-op and Sainsbury’s.
Employers must not discriminate against workers on the grounds of their religion or religious beliefs. In Page v NHS Trust Development Authority, the Court of Appeal has looked at whether an employee can be fairly dismissed for the way he expressed his beliefs, rather than the beliefs themselves.
In 2017, in the case of King v Sash Windows, the CJEU established that a worker can carry over unlimited annual leave which they have been prevented from taking because the employer refuses to pay for it. The CJEU said domestic time limits for bringing such a claim – for example, our 3-month time limit to bring an employment claim for unpaid holiday under the Working Time Regulations 1998 or unlawful deduction from wages – should not prevent workers from exercising important EU rights. In Smith v Pimlico Plumbers, the EAT has looked at whether a worker can carry forward holiday that he has taken, but not been paid for, to future years.
The minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss, has asked employers to make flexible working a standard option for employees. She believes this step would boost both productivity and morale and improve employment prospects for women – who are twice as likely to work flexibly while they juggle childcare responsibilities – as well as those who don’t live close to big cities. The Government Equalities Office has published a report, ‘Encouraging employers to advertise jobs as flexible’, by the Behavioural Insights Team and the jobs website Indeed. The report said that job applications increase by 30 per cent when flexible working is offered.
The National Living Wage (previously known as the national minimum wage) increased from 1 April to £8.91, the equivalent of more than £345 a year for a full-time employee. For the first time, adults aged 23 and over will qualify for this top pay rate, rather than 25s and over.
Remote working has hidden employees from sight, causing some employers to worry about what their staff are doing during working hours. The Guardian has reported that one of the world’s biggest call centre companies is planning to install surveillance systems to monitor what their staff are doing, whether that’s working, eating or going to the toilet. Teleperformance, which employs 380,000 staff in 34 countries, works for big names in Britain such as the government, NHS Digital, Vodafone, Aviva and the Guardian itself. The article says that there is nothing to suggest that these companies know about this surveillance plan and Teleperformance has now indicated that surveillance will not be rolled out in the UK. Teleperformance has said that the surveillance plans evolved from employees saying that they felt isolated while working at home.
A report in the media recently suggested that Raheem Sterling was to set up his own football agency[1]. This article looks at whether that is possible and some alternative explanations.
Firstly, there is no obligation for a footballer to retain the services of an FA Registered Intermediary (commonly referred to as agents, which is the term utilised in this article), as the player is perfectly entitled to represent himself/herself to negotiate a contract with a club.
The EU have published a redacted version of the Advanced Purchase Agreement it entered into with AstraZeneca AB for the supply of Covid 19 vaccine. This article considers the terms of the redacted version of the Agreement in light of the claims made by the EU Commission, the threats made by the Commission and the actions taken by the Commission.
I am a commercial contracts lawyer of over 20 years’ experience who has worked on contracts in the bio medical and pharmaceutical sector, and on Government and EU supply contracts for much of that period. I caveat the contents of this article on the basis that I am an English qualified lawyer and the Agreement is subject to the laws of Belgium. As such, some of this article by necessity is approached from an English law perspective.
In a bid to make it easier to repurpose town centres and high streets across England and Wales, the Government has made major changes to the ‘use classes’ that businesses must operate within for planning purposes.
New regulations came into force on 1st September 2020 which significantly amended the 1987 Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order. A number of classes have been abolished and moved into a more generic Class E.
In January 2021, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government unveiled sweeping changes that they plan to implement to the home ownership rules that, according to their press release will be part of “the biggest reforms to English property law for 40 years, fundamentally making home ownership fairer and more secure”.
Freehold or leasehold – what’s the difference?
Owners of flats and houses in England and Wales can either own the freehold which means they own the property and land it occupies or the leasehold which means they own the property and have a legal right to occupy the land but the land is owned by a third party. These reforms are aimed at leasehold property.
| 
