The government has announced that from 2014 it will bring in a new service providing (amongst other things) state funded occupational health testing where an employee is off work due to illness for more than four weeks.
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Some compensation limits increased on 1 February 2013.  The maximum unfair dismissal compensatory award has risen from £72,300 to £74,200, and the maximum amount of a week’s pay has risen from £430 to £450 (this increase in a week’s pay affects the basic award in an unfair dismissal claim and statutory redundancy calculation amongst other things).
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2013 is going to be a year of changes in employment law and we thought it would be useful to keep you updated with the schedule for the changes. 1 February 2013: Tribunal compensation limits will increase The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will rise from £72,300 to £74,200 and the maximum amount of a week’s pay, used to calculate statutory redundancy pay (among other things), will rise from £430 to £450. March 2013: Equality Act changes Individuals will no longer have the very specific protection for harassment by third parties in the Equality Act (e.g. where an employee
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The government has announced changes to collective redundancy rules where 100 or more employees are affected. The 90-day minimum period before the first redundancy can take effect will be reduced to 45 days and a new ACAS non-statutory code of practice will be introduced. The government also intends to introduce new legislation to exclude employees whose fixed-term contracts are about to expire from collective redundancy consultations. These changes are due to come into effect on 6 April 2013.
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Employment Tribunal compensation limits will increase on 1 February 2013. The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will rise from £72,300 to £74,200 and the maximum amount of a week’s pay, used to calculate statutory redundancy pay (among other things), will rise from £430 to £450.
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On 1 December 2012, new legislation came into force, which merges the Criminal Records Bureau and Independent Safeguarding Authority to form the Disclosure and Barring Service.  Following this change: A standard CRB check has become a standard DBS check. An enhanced CRB check has become an enhanced DBS check. An enhanced CRB check with Barred List check has become an enhanced check for regulated activity.
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To qualify for certain statutory rights (such as unfair dismissal) it is necessary for an employee to have acquired a minimum period of continuous employment.  The general rule is that an employee’s continuous employment will be broken by any week which does not count towards continuity. In this case the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that an employee’s service under two contracts of employment with the same employer was continuous, even though the employee did not start work under the second contract until more than a week after the end of the first contract. It was decided that the second contract
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The government has announced its decision to proceed with the extension of the right to request flexible working. The right will become available to all employees from 2014, provided they have 26 weeks’ continuous service. The current statutory procedure will be replaced with a duty on employers to deal with requests reasonably, and a statutory code of practice will be issued to give guidance as to how this will work in practice. Guidance will also be issued on how employers should prioritise conflicting requests received from different employees.
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The government has announced a new system of statutory parental rights to be introduced in 2015. Parents will be able to share the statutory leave and pay that is currently only available to mothers. Flexible parental leave can either be taken by each parent consecutively, or by both parents concurrently, as long as the combined amount of leave does not exceed the amount which is jointly available to the couple.  Additional paternity leave will be abolished, and there will be no extension to the current statutory paternity rights. In addition the entitlement to unpaid parental leave will be extended from
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The European Court of Human Rights has decided that the UK must extend legal protection to employees dismissed on the grounds of their political beliefs or affiliation.  This could be done by the UK changing the law to offer that protection, either by creating an exception to the requirement for a qualifying period for unfair dismissal, or by creating a free-standing claim for unlawful discrimination on grounds of political affiliation.  The case was brought by an individual who was dismissed after being elected as a local councillor for the BNP. (Redfearn v United Kingdom)
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