HR Articles

Disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on someone’s “ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities” (Section 6(1), Equality Act 2010).

The Upper Tribunal, that deals with tax appeals, has upheld a decision that a settlement payment for injury to feelings made in connection with a termination of employment was taxable as a termination payment. The payment was made to settle all the taxpayer's claims against the employer including claims for unfair dismissal and age discrimination arising during the redundancy selection process. (Moorthy v HMRC [2016] UKUT 13 TCC (14 January 2016)

An employment tribunal has recently held that an immigration officer, who accepted a bribe and then delayed returning the money and reporting it, was fairly dismissed.

In the immigration team we help people who are applying for many different kinds of visa – from students to skilled workers, visitors to spouses. But what do all visa applications have in common? The requirement to provide evidence that you meet the conditions for the specific visa. Unfortunately, failure to produce just one required document can have serious consequences.

The EAT has overruled a tribunal’s decision, holding the fact that employees over 50 were entitled to early retirement benefits under the pension scheme (making their severance costs much higher than for employees aged under 50) was not a "relevant circumstance".

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which advises the government on migration issues, has published a review of Tier 2.

The European Court of Human Rights' Judgment in a Romanian employment dispute has been widely reported in the national press as giving the green light to employers to monitor employees' personal emails and electronic messages on work systems. Not surprisingly, the press coverage over-simplifies the effect of this particular ruling and employers need to continue to tread very carefully when monitoring personal emails and other electronic communications.

UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) have recently made changes to the Tier 2 and 5 sponsor guidance published on its website. UKVI already imposes onerous obligations on employers who sponsor employees who are from outside...

This week, regulations 2015 came into effect making any dismissal of an employee on a zero hours contract automatically unfair, if the principal reason for the dismissal is that the employee breached a contractual provision seeking to prohibit him/her from working for another employer. Such provisions are now unlawful. No qualifying period is required to bring such an unfair dismissal claim.

In Paturel v DB Services (UK) Ltd the High Court held that an employer's decision to award one employee a discretionary bonus and two others a larger guaranteed bonus did not breach the employee's express contractual term to be treated consistently with peers nor did it breach any implied term to act in good faith and in a manner that was not perverse or irrational. The employee also claimed that the employer's subsequent failure to provide accurate reasons for the sums awarded was a breach of trust and confidence.