News

The government has today (1st April 2011) published the draft guidance, open for comment for a two week period. It is crucial that people recognise that the document is a work in progress and has not yet been finalised. Final guidance is expected to be published early in May 2011, with plenty of time for consideration before […]

The long awaited guidance to the Agency Workers Regulations is to be published in draft form today, and the final guidance is expected to be published early in May. Ravi Murphy, a Director of Lawspeed, in announcing a series of seminars to be held on the subject, said , “Many organisations have been waiting for […]

The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has released its review of small business taxation including IR35. Its proposals are aimed at aiding small businesses by reducing the complexity and uncertainty of the tax system. The report’s proposals include the merging of Income Tax with National Insurance, and three options for improvement to IR35. IR35, long […]

A limited company contractor has won an IR35 case in the first-tier tax tribunal. Mr Fitzpatrick provided design services to Airbus for the A380 project. Airbus had a contract with the principal contractor, which in turn had contracted with Mr Fitzpatrick’s own company. HMRC claimed that his company should be liable under the IR35 rules. […]

The government recently announced that it was delaying for a second time the implementation of the Bribery Act 2010 which was originally intended for October 2010, then pushed back to April 2011. It has now been delayed again as the Ministry of Justice acknowledges that it has passed its own January deadline for publication of […]

Following our article in January’s AZ newsletter, the draft regulations to abolish the default retirement age of 65 have been laid before parliament. The Regulations will come into force on 6 April 2011. The last ‘notice of intended retirement’ can be given up until 5 April 2011* for employee’s who have attained or will attain […]

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 came into force in 2008 and introduced a new offence of corporate manslaughter where the gross negligence of a company’s senior management results in death. On 15 February 2011, Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings was found guilty of corporate manslaughter, this being the first conviction under the Act. This […]

The government has announced that it will not be proceeding with plans to extend the right for employees to ask for time off for training to all employers in April 2011 as planned. The right to ask for time off for training applies to employees with 26 weeks continuous service. This right is similar to […]

The Freedoms Bill has had its first reading in parliament. The Bill has a wide range covering issues relating to fingerprinting, DNA, CCTV and even wheel clamping. However, it also proposes a review of the current criminal records and vetting and barring regime, in order to “scale it back to common sense levels”. The changes […]

In a recent judgement of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (‘EAT’) it was decided that a claimant who accepted a settlement offer on the morning before the case was due to start, but had rejected the exact same settlement offer some months earlier, had acted unreasonably. The EAT was therefore justified in awarding costs to the […]

An employer has paid £5,000 in compensation and £8,000 court costs to a former employee after he paraded the employee through the streets with a sign around his neck declaring he was a thief. The employee had admitted he had stolen money from his employer by writing a company cheque to himself for £845 and […]

A former employee who brought defamation proceedings against the BBC for allegedly making defamatory comments during a capability review has seen his case dismissed by the High Court. So, what is defamation? Defamation concerns the publication of materials which result in a loss of trade or causes a reasonable person to think less of an […]

An employee was unsuccessful in his claim of age discrimination when he sought to argue that his employer had rushed through the redundancy process to be able to dismiss him before he reached his 50th birthday. The employee would have gained extra benefits upon redundancy once he reached 50 years of age. It was decided […]