March 2009 Archives - Employment Law Advocates

Christmas and New Year Office Closure

01-Dec-2011 / Employment Law Advocates / Comments Off

Our office will be closing for the holiday period at 12.00pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 and will reopen again until 10.00am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012. Advocates will be mostly unavailable but may have intermittent access to email or telephone during this period. If you are an existing client, please contact your Advocate directly by email or telephone. If you are a new client or are seeking advice, please email info@employmentlawadvocates.com or complete the enquiry form on our Contact Us page ...

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Crisis at the EHRC

30-Mar-2009 / James Medhurst / 2 Comments

It was reported on the front page of the Guardian¬†on Saturday morning that¬†Sir Bert Massie, the former¬†chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, has threatened to resign from his post¬†as a¬†commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. His decision¬†follows three resignations earlier in the same week and¬†many people are¬†unhappy with the direction in which the organisation is going. The problem is that the softly softly approach favoured by Trevor Phillips in his days as head of the Commission for¬†Racial Equality ...

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The future of TUPE

25-Mar-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

This morning, Daniel Barnett¬†reported on the case of Roydon v Barnetts Solicitors, a decision of the Liverpool Employment Tribunal regarding the new TUPE Regulations. In my view, as far as the finding that there had been a service provision change¬†is concerned, the only surprising thing about it is that anyone is surprised. Even the commentators who have noted its inconvenience to solicitors have not suggested that it is wrong in law and, quite frankly, the Regulations cause¬†just as much inconvenience ...

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What needs to be pleaded?

23-Mar-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

In the case of Swallow Security Services v Millicent, it was unsurprisingly found that a tribunal has a duty to consider contributory fault of its own motion when it has not been pleaded and has not been raised in submissions by an unrepresented party. This is consistent with the approach to many other areas of unfair dismissal including procedural fairness, Polkey reductions and statutory uplifts. What is more controversial is that the Employment Appeal Tribunal distinguished the case of Mensah ...

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Is being green a religion?

20-Mar-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

There was a curious story in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. A former executive of a property company claimed he had been discriminated against¬†on the grounds of his belief in climate change and a tribunal ruled that it did have jurisdiction to hear the case under the Religion¬†or Belief Regulations. While I have every sympathy for him if he was dismissed for that reason, I am doubtful that the decision is correct as it would seem to open the door for ...

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The impact of Malcolm

16-Mar-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

The Employment Appeal Tribunal have¬†made a number of recent decisions about the impact of the House of Lords decision in Lewisham v Malcolm. They have all held that Malcolm does apply to employment law but, in most cases, this has made very little difference to the outcome. This supports the view of the government in its recent consultation document¬†that disabled people will almost always be able to enforce their rights in the employment sphere in other ways. There appeared to ...

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