We provide a wide range of legal services to individuals through our specialist teams of solicitors across our offices.
We provide a wide range of legal services to individuals through our specialist teams of solicitors across our offices.
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We provide a wide range of legal services to businesses through our specialist teams of solicitors across our offices.
Online Services
There are two ways to ask for flexible working:
To be eligible to make a statutory application the individual must:
An employer must handle the request in accordance with the law on flexible working. An employer will need to consider the request and decides within three months unless agreed otherwise with the employee.
There are eight business grounds upon which an employer may reject the request. These are
If you do not meet the criteria for making a statutory request, you could still make a non-statutory request, or make one under your employer’s scheme if there is one.
It is automatically unfair to dismiss a woman (at any time) or to select her for redundancy when the reason (or principal reason) for the dismissal (or selection for redundancy) is connected to her pregnancy or statutory maternity leave.
It is also automatically unfair to dismiss her or select her for redundancy during maternity leave for a reason connected to the fact that she has given birth. A claim for pregnancy and maternity discrimination could also be pursued. If a redundancy situation does arise during your maternity leave period, your employer must offer any available suitable alternative vacancy to you in preference to any other employee who is also potentially redundant but not on maternity leave.
An employee returning to work after ordinary maternity leave is entitled to return to the job previously held prior to maternity leave, on the same terms and conditions.
An employee returning to work after additional maternity leave is also entitled to return to the same job on the same terms and conditions as if she had not been absent unless a redundancy situation has arisen or if it is not reasonably practical for her employer to take her back in her original job.
During periods of paid maternity leave, either ordinary or additional, an employer’s pension contribution should be calculated as if the woman is working normally and receiving the usual remuneration.
During unpaid maternity leave, i.e. the last 13 weeks of additional maternity leave, the employer would not be under any duty to continue contributions unless otherwise provided in the contract.
Regardless of length of service, a pregnant employee is entitled to take 26 weeks’ ordinary maternity leave followed immediately by 26 weeks’ additional maternity leave.
An individual is entitled to the benefit of all terms and conditions of employment which would have applied had she not been absent except for remuneration i.e. salary.
Unlike the County Courts or High Court there are no costs for issuing a claim at the Employment Tribunal.
If the tribunal finds that the employee was unfairly dismissed, in can order compensation, reinstatement or re-engagement.
A compensation award will compromise a basic award and a compensatory award. The basic award is calculated in the same way as a statutory redundancy payment. The compensatory award is to compensate the employee for past and future financial losses arising as a result of the dismissal. An employee is under a duty to mitigate their losses. The maximum compensatory award from 6 April 2022 is £93,878 or 52-weeks gross pay, whichever is the lower.
All employees with at least two year’s continuous service are entitled to written reasons for their dismissal on request.
The statutory minimum notice to be given by an employee who has been continuously employed for one month or more to terminate his or her contract is not less than one week.
Where the employee has been employed for one month but less than two years, the statutory minimum to be provided by the employer is one week’s notice. After two years’ service this rises to one week for each year of continuous service, although a maximum of 12 weeks’ notice applies where the employee has been employed for 12 years or more.
Yes. Your statutory right is for either a Trade Union Representative or workplace colleague.
The person appointed to deal with a grievance should be objective and should not have been involved in the issues giving rise to the employee’s complaint.
In the Employment Tribunal each side will pay their own costs but in certain limited circumstances, the Tribunal may order one side to pay costs to the other (e.g. where one of the side’s has brought or conducted their case unreasonably).
A worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks annual leave in each year. No minimum period of continuous service is required to qualify. This entitlement is equivalent to 28 days leave for a classic five day full time working week arrangement.
Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, adult workers have the right to:
The rights to a minimum daily and weekly rest period do not apply in relation to shift workers when they change shift and cannot take a daily or weekly rest period between the end of one shift and the start of the next, or to workers engaged in activities involving periods of work split up over the day.
The Working Time Regulations 1998 apply to most workers with some exemptions.
ACAS states that you are more likely to be classed as a worker if:
ACAS goes on to say that you’re more likely to be classed as an employee if:
For both contentious and non-contentious work, we usually offer an initial fixed fee appointment to our clients.
After the initial appointment, an estimate of fees will be provided for contentious work. For non-contentious work, such as drafting contract documents, policies, appeal letters or grievance letters we will give you a fixed fee wherever possible. The firm’s policy is to provide an open and transparent pricing of our work. For contentious work, there are a number of ways in which your liability for legal fees and expenses may be met, this includes legal expenses insurance. We often act under a client’s legal expenses insurance policy which tends to arise either as an extension to a home contents policy, motor insurance policy or specialist legal expenses insurance. If you have insurance which might cover this legal work, your legal expenses insurers may agree to this firm being instructed on your behalf.
The Court of Appeal in Vento -v- Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] and Da’ Bell -v- National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children set down the following guidance. As at 6 April 2022 the Vento bands are:
The Employment Tribunal can:
There is no qualifying period for employees (including workers) making a claim of discrimination.
The claim must be presented within three months of the act complained of or last in a series of continuing acts. The employment tribunal does have the power to extend this period if they consider it just and equitable to do so. To constitute a continual act, a link must be made between the acts by some discriminatory state of affairs being established.
Yes, deemed disabilities include:
In all other cases, the statutory test applies. This states: “A person (P) has a disability if (a) P has a physical or mental impairment, and (b) the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
Direct discrimination cannot generally be justified. With regard to direct age discrimination this will only occur when an employer cannot objectively justify their actions.
The basis of a complaint of discrimination must be linked to a Protected Characteristic. These Protected Characteristic are:
The Equality Act 2010 protects you from discrimination:
As a worker, you have various statutory rights including:
As an employee, you have various statutory rights including:
Some of these rights require a minimum length of continuous employment before an employee qualifies for them.
There are five main types of employment status:
You have the right to a statutory redundancy payment if you are an employee who has worked continuously for your employer for at least two years and you are being made redundant.
Please click here to visit the .gov redundancy calculator.
For help and advice, talk to a member of our team. They can advise on the best options in your matter.
