Employment Law Updates April 2014

From 6th April this year, a number of employment law changes have been introduced to the UK. Further, some of the expected employment law developments due to take place in April have been delayed until later this year. Here is an overview of some of the key changes to note for employers and employees / former employees alike.

Statutory Discrimination Questionnaires
These have now been abolished in respect of alleged acts of discrimination occurring on or after 6th April 2014. Nonetheless employees are still able to ask relevant related questions. The employer’s responses, or failure to respond are likely to be taken into consideration by employment tribunal when considering whether or not alleged discrimination has taken place. They cannot, however make automatically adverse inferences from a failure to respond to the questions asked. Notwithstanding this, it is still advisable that employers take care to ensure that they respond to questions relating to discrimination thoroughly and properly.

TUPE Transfers – Pension Protection Regime
Changes have been made to the current pension protection regime intending to reflect the introduction of employer auto-enrolment duties under the Pensions Act 2008. The transferee employer now has the option of matching the transferring employer’s level of employee contributions. Previously, the transferee employer was required to match the employee’s contribution rate up to 6%.The changes also serve to prevent a situation where a transferee employer may have to pay a higher level of pension contribution than either the employee’s old employer, or that required by the Pensions Act 2008.

Early Conciliation – ACAS
Before issuing a claim at employment tribunal, employees will now have to submit details of their dispute to ACAS and will then be offered early conciliation. Claimants will be offered Early Conciliation for a month, and the time limit for presenting a claim can be extended, as can the Early Conciliation time which can be extended for two weeks. There is no obligation on either party to conciliate, and if conciliation does not succeed or is refused by either party, the employee will still be able to present their claim. They will, however require a conciliation certificate to confirm that Early Conciliation requirements have been met. This may be good news for both employers and employees, as the hope is that many claims will be settled even before tribunal proceedings are started. This will hopefully save time and money as ACAS is a free service and the expectation is that there should be a good success rate. For further information, ACAS has published a new leaflet called ‘Early Conciliation Explained.’ Please note that early conciliation is available for claims in relevant proceedings presented on or after April 6th 2014, and will be mandatory from May 6th 2014. (Unless an exemption applies.) It is also worth noting that when the claimant contacts ACAS, this effectively ‘pauses,’ the time limit for presenting a claim to tribunal.

Change To Procedure When There Is More Than One Respondent
From 20th April 2014, The Employment Tribunals (Early Concilation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (SI2014/847) have set out that a prospective claimant will now need to either submit a separate Early Conciliation Form or telephone ACAS, identifying each prospective respondent as opposed to only identifying one.

Tribunal – Financial Penalties
Employment tribunals have been given the power to impose a financial penalty on employers who lose at tribunal. The penalty must be 50 per cent of any award. The penalty can be between a minimum of £100 and maximum of £5,000. It can also be reduced by 50 per cent if the employer pays within 21 days. Financial penalties may be awarded where there have been aggravating features such as unreasonable behaviour, malice or negligence. Genuine mistakes should not be penalised and tribunals are required to take into account the employer’s ability to pay.

Statutory Sick Pay
Two of the biggest changes to note regarding statutory sick pay are as follows:
From April, employers are no longer able to reclaim SSP from HMRC.
Record keeping obligations have also been abolished. Employers now have the flexibility to keep records in a manner that suits their own business needs.

Tribunal Limit Changes
On 6th April, employment tribunal compensation limits rose in line with inflation. The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will be £76,574 or 52 weeks’ pay if this is less. The maximum basic award for statutory redundancy payment will be £13,920. For the purpose of calculating a week’s pay for both statutory redundancy and unfair dismissal payments will be £464.

Statutory Payments Increase
Please take note of the statutory increase in payments for maternity, paternity, adoption and sick pay:
Maternity, paternity and adoption pay – £138.18 per week
Statutory Sick pay – £87.55 per week.

Increase in Penalty for Employing Illegal Migrant Workers
The maximum penalty for employers who employ illegal migrant workers (workers who do not have the right to live or work in the UK) has doubled to £20,000.

Changes that have been delayed
As highlighted above, there are some expected changes that have been delayed until later in 2014 and early 2015.

Introduction of Health and Work Service – A new Health and Work Service will now be gradually phased in between October 2014 and April of next year. The new Health and Work Service will be introduced in order to help employees get back to work more quickly. The service will carry out state-funded occupational health assessments for employees who are off sick for four weeks or more. The service will give advice to both employers and employees and employers and GPs will be able to make referrals. Should an employee fail to engage with the service, then employees will lose their SSP and no further fit notes certifying sickness absence will be issued.

Flexible Working – The right to request flexible working was due to be made on 6th April but will now take place on 30th June 2014. The right to request flexible working will be extended to all employees with 26 or more weeks service. This means that employees will not need to be parents or carers in order to apply. Further, employees will be able to use their own HR procedure instead of following the current statutory procedure. Nonetheless; employers will have to demonstrate that they have dealt with requests reasonably, and must respond within 3 months.

Whilst every effort has been made to maintain accuracy throughout this article, Nationwide Employment Lawyers cannot accept responsibility or liability for any errors. This article is intended for guidance purposes  only and does not constitute specialist legal advice. Nationwide Employment Lawyers accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for any action taken or not taken in relation to this article and recommend that appropriate legal advice be taken in all circumstances.