In December 2016 we wrote about the sad case of Bellman vs Northampton Recruitment.  This looked at whether employers can be held liable for issues occurring after an office Christmas party. It’s well established in employment law that a Christmas party should always be considered as an “extension of the workplace”, but this case looked […]

With summer temperatures soaring to the highest levels since 1976, employers should be thinking about how they should manage the workplace environment to keep their workers in the best conditions possible. The Legal Position The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations of 1992 say that an employer needs to maintain a “reasonable” temperature in the […]

The 2018 World Cup in Moscow is now well under way. Businesses may have already been handling annual leave requests from the more astute football fans, but for the less organised followers of the sport, time’s up for holiday requests. With afternoon kick offs scheduled throughout the tournament, employers need to be mindful of the […]

At Backhouse Solicitors our commercial law experts often see businesses with no formal shareholder or partnership agreements in place. Unfortunately, this lack of documentation only really becomes an issue at a crunch time for the business when problems are starting to occur – at this point it would be really helpful to have the rules […]

Is it disability discrimination to refuse to employ somebody because you think that a condition they have may become a disability in future? In the recent case of Chief Constable of Norfolk vs Coffey, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) decided that yes it is. Ms Coffey was a serving police officer with Wiltshire Police who […]

In February 2018 the Government announced a response to Matthew Taylor’s Review of Modern Working Practices which came out last year. The Business Secretary Matthew Taylor pledged to introduce what he called a “Good Work Plan” and follow through on some of the recommendations in the Taylor report to improve employment rights for flexible workers […]

One of the highest profile employment law cases of recent times went to the Supreme Court on 20 February 2018. Gary Smith worked for Pimlico between 2005 and 2011 as a “self-employed” plumber. He was required to wear a Pimlico uniform, lease a signwritten company van and work a minimum number of hours each week. […]

In the recent case of Parsons vs. Airplus International, Ms Parsons made a number of disclosures to her employer in her role as legal compliance officer for the company. The company found her rude and difficult to deal with and eventually sacked her after just 6 weeks. Ms Parson sued her employer and claimed that […]