Legal changes on the horizon

 Proposed legal change

 What and when?

 The right to request ‘more predictable contracts’

This is an outstanding part of the government Good Work Plan and is a stated intention of the government to allow ‘all workers’ to request a more stable contract after 26 weeks service.

This could significantly impact the agency sector and those who use temporary workers.

We don’t have a clear date but we will update when we know more, we expect that to be in the new year.

 A week’s leave for carers

 Only ‘employees’ will be eligible for this leave and it will include:-

• a day one right to one week’s unpaid leave;
• for those who come under the present definition used for time off for ‘dependants’; and
• who care for such a person with a ‘disability’ as defined under the Equality Act 2010 and
• it may also be taken flexibly and may apply for wider caring needs too.

 Pregnancy and maternity discrimination and extended redundancy protection

 The proposal is to extend the period of redundancy protection:

• to begin at the point notice of pregnancy is given to the employer; and
• continuing thereafter for six months after maternity leave ends.

Again, we’ll update more on this in our new year updates.

 Neonatal leave

Consultation on the provision of leave and pay for parents of premature and sick babies closed in late 2019 – we are yet to see final details.

All ‘tips paid to all workers’ will be mandatory

Present legislation bans employers from retaining workers’ tips; albeit it does not prevent employers from holding on to ‘service charges’ paid by credit card payments.

 That will change along with: -

•  A new code of practice on this issue.
•  A requirement for policy documents to be issued by employers.
• A right for employees to request information on their tips with a four-week time limit to reply.
• A deadline for payment of such tips by the end of the month following the month they were paid.

 Flexible working to become the default position

This was set out in the government manifesto – with the effects of the pandemic we are yet to see whether or not this will progress.

The Consultation, published in September 2021, highlights the key changes that appear to be:

• the move to make the right to request flexible working to a ‘day 1’ right; and
• assessing if the eight present reasons for justification of any refusal remain appropriate;
• inserting a requirement for employers to consider any alternatives to refusal of a request; and
• a review of the process including examining whether or not the one request each year and three-month period for reply are still appropriate.

The pandemic has accelerated the use of flexible working and we’ll update on implementation in the new year.

These changes will, in our view, make it harder to handle requests and increase the number of the requests made to employers.

Extending the length of period that breaks continuity of employment

The current regime, generally speaking, means that a break in continuity of employment of over one clear week, will break an employee’s continuous service with their employer. This is the period which the employee can use to calculate various rights which is important, for example, because it brings with it rights such as notice pay, redundancy pay and rights to claim unfair dismissal.

This proposal is to extend this ‘break’ period and it arises out of, among other things, concerns over the abuse of zero-hours workers terms and was included in changes made by the governments ‘Good Work Plan’; the extent of this change is yet to be clarified but it will be significant and notable and we will update in the new year.