What did we get up to last month?
Katharine attended an ACAS seminar about the early conciliation process that will be compulsory from 6 May. In a nutshell, from that date all potential claimants will be obliged to contact ACAS prior to issuing a claim so that ACAS can assist the parties in reaching a settlement before the matter ends up in Tribunal. If settlement is not achieved, ACAS will issue the claimant with a certificate which will allow he or she to proceed to Tribunal. The claimant's deadline for submitting his or her claim will be put on hold while conciliation is attempted and the clock will be restarted once that certificate is received.
The effect of that is that every single claim will have a different deadline by which it must be brought. This is in stark contrast to the current and relatively straightforward 3-month deadline that applies in the vast majority of cases.
While the overarching aim of the early conciliation process is good, we are very concerned about the impact that the scheme will have on the deadline for claims to be brought. We think that this aspect of it will lead to confusion, with claimants missing their deadlines due to the difficulty in calculating the amended deadline for issuing their claim, or, at the very least, it will lead to many more preliminary hearings to enable the tribunal to determine whether or not a claim has in fact been issued in time.
Any plans for this month?
Our next Buckles HR Breakfast Club workshops will be held on Tuesday 3 and Friday 6 June and we are sending invitations out very soon, so keep an eye on your inbox!
This time we will be turning to the topic of Redundancy. Rather than laboriously going through the redundancy process (which I'm sure you are all now familiar with) we will instead discuss some interesting cases on the more challenging issues of pools and selection, as this is an area that we are frequently asked to advise on. As usual there will be plenty of time to network with fellow HR professionals.
These workshops are for those of you who have in-house responsibility for HR matters in your company or organisation. We're always happy to welcome new faces and it's not too late to join the club. There is no charge but places are limited and do get booked up quickly.
We also have another date for your diary and can confirm that our Annual Employment Law Conference will take place at our Peterborough office on Tuesday 24 June. We are pleased to report that in addition to updates on employment law from our team here, we will be joined by GreenStones Accountants and Origen Workplace Solutions. More details to follow in due course.
Any new cases to be aware of?
- In Prophet plc v Huggett, the High Court granted an injunction to uphold a 12 month restrictive covenant which had been incorrectly drafted. The covenant sought to prevent Mr Huggett from working for a competitor if he would be selling products that he had been responsible for selling during his employment with Prophet. Of course, no other business would be selling Prophet's products and therefore the clause made no sense. Somewhat surprisingly however, the Court was prepared to re-word the covenant so that it made commercial sense and went on to uphold it against Mr Huggett.
This is not a green light to be sloppy with drafting! Covenants need careful thought and clear drafting and we would suggest legal advice should always be sought by employers who want to protect its business interests against departing employees.
- The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed the Tribunal's decision in Lyons v DWP Jobcentre Plus that Ms Lyons had not been discriminated against because of pregnancy or sex when she was dismissed for capability after having taken a prolonged period of sickness absence due to post-natal depression. Women are only protected from pregnancy discrimination during the "protected period" of pregnancy and maternity leave and in this case Ms Lyons was neither pregnant nor on maternity leave when she was dismissed. Furthermore, the EAT upheld that Tribunal's finding that Ms Lyons had not been discriminated against by reason of her sex since she was not treated any less favourably than a man would have been had he been absent from work due to sickness for the same period.
- It was held in Punjab National Bank (International) Ltd v Gosain that recordings of Ms Gosain's grievance and disciplinary hearings and private deliberations of the decision-making panel that she had made covertly were admissible as evidence in subsequent Tribunal proceedings. The Bank had objected to the recording of the private discussions being used as evidence since they had been made without the knowledge or permission of the individuals who were involved in the disciplinary and grievance hearings. However, the Tribunal concluded that the recordings could be admitted as evidence as the private comments were not part of their deliberations of the matter under consideration. The EAT supported this view.
