A number of changes to employment law took effect a couple of weeks ago and we thought it would be useful to set them out along with some changes to certain prescribed rates.

As of 6 April:-

• The maximum compensatory award for an unfair dismissal claim will increase to £76,574 (from £74,200). However, the secondary cap of a maximum of 12 months’, will still apply. Consequently, the most that can be awarded in a standard unfair dismissal claim will be the lower of £76,574 or 12 months’ gross pay. In addition, a week’s pay (which is used for calculating statutory redundancy payments and basic awards) will increase from £450 to £464. This means that the new maximum statutory redundancy payment will be £13,920 (up from £13,500).
• Abolishment of discrimination questionnaires. Under the Equality Act, an employee or former employee who is considering bringing a discrimination claim can send his or her employer a list of questions to answer. The employer has eight weeks to reply. If the employer fails to respond or gives evasive or ambiguous answers, the tribunal can draw an inference that discrimination has occurred. Many employers will be happy to hear that on 6 April 2014, this questionnaire procedure was abolished. However, employees are still able to ask questions and the answers, or lack of them, can be taken into account by the tribunal. A tribunal will therefore still be able to take a view on why the employer has not responded properly and may still make an adverse inference from it when weighing up the evidence in the normal course of the case. This change is therefore unlikely to make much of a difference. Consequently, ACAS has issued guidance about how to deal with questions raised informally by employees to assist employers in future.
• Discretionary financial penalties for employers. Where there are aggravating features such as unreasonable behaviour, negligence or malice, tribunals have been given the power to impose a financial penalty on employers who lose at tribunal of 50 per cent of any award. The penalty can be between £100 and £5,000 and can be reduced by 50 per cent if the employer pays within 21 days. However, genuine mistakes by the employer will not be penalised and tribunals are required to take into account the employer’s ability to pay.
• Early ACAS conciliation has been introduced meaning that a claimant will now be required to contact ACAS before they can issue a claim at the tribunal. The claimant will be offered early conciliation for a month, which can be extended by two weeks, and the time limit for presenting a claim will be extended. If conciliation is refused by either party or does not succeed, the employee will be able to present his or her claim. Although there is no obligation on either party to conciliate, ACAS hopes that the scheme will have a high success rate and that a number of potential employment claims could be settled before tribunal proceedings are started, saving the parties time and money.
• A new approach to sickness absence management is also to be introduced by the government in 2015. As a first step towards this, the government have abolished statutory sick pay (SSP) record-keeping obligations. Employers now have the flexibility to keep sickness absence records in a manner that best suits their own business needs. In addition, and as of 6 April, SSP payments can no longer be recovered via the Percentage Threshold Scheme. The scheme enabled employers to recover any SSP that has been paid in a tax month that is in excess of 13% of the gross Class 1 National Insurance Contributions for that month.
• The SSP rate increases from £86.70 to £87.55 per week. Equally, the Statutory Maternity Pay prescribed rate increases from £136.78 to £138.18 per week as does the Statutory Paternity Pay prescribed rate and the Statutory Adoption Pay prescribed rate.

If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this article, please contact our employment law solicitor, Khurram Ahmad, on 0161 834 2623 or khurram.ahmad@bpslaw.co.uk