HUMAN RESOURCES NEWS BULLETINS

CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT LEGISLATION

This update includes:

• Increases to Employment Tribunal Compensatory Awards and Statutory Redundancy Payments from 1 February 2008
• Low Emission Zone Charges from 4 February 2008
• New Asylum and Immigration Changes from 29 February 2008
• Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

Employment Tribunal Compensatory Awards and Redundancy Payments

• As from 1 February 2008 the maximum that an employee can recover for the compensatory award if they win an employment tribunal claim will rise to £63,000 from £60,600. However, remember that there is no such limit in cases involving discrimination.
• The maximum on a week's pay is to increase from £310 to £330 - this is used in calculating a redundancy payment or for various awards, including the basic or additional award of compensation for unfair dismissal

Low Emission Zone Charges from 4 February 2008

There will be a phased introduction of the Low Emission Zone from 4 February 2007. Different vehicles will be affected over time and increasingly tougher emissions standards will apply. It will affect older, diesel-engined lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large vans (exceeding 1.205 tonnes unladen weight). It will also affect other specialist vehicles that are derived from lorries and vans, including motorised horse boxes, breakdown and recovery vehicles, refuse collection vehicles, gritters, sweepers, concrete mixers, tippers, removal lorries, fire appliances, motor caravans, ambulances and large hearses (over 2.5 tonnes).

The charge has been brought in to reduce London traffic congestion and improve journey times by encouraging people to choose other forms of transport if possible.

The Low Emission Zone (LEZ) will cover most of Greater London, following the Greater London Authority boundary. In some places it deviates from this for suitable alternative routes and turnaround points. All roads including certain motorways, are included in the zone. The M25 is not included, even where it passes within the boundary. All parts of the London Congestion Zone will fall within the LEZ. Therefore, if you drive within it, you will need to pay the Congestion Charge in addition to any applicable LEZ charge.

The LEZ will be enforced using fixed and mobile cameras which will read your vehicle's number plate (VEM) as you travel within the Zone and check it against a database of registered vehicles.

To find out if your vehicle is affected you can check the LEZ emissions standards and how to comply and learn how you can meet the LEZ requirements and avoid paying the daily charge. Or click on www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/lez

If this change applies to you and your vehicles and drivers, then you will have to update your employment contracts and any Company Vehicle Policy you may have to include this.


Changes to the Asylum and Immigration Act

New legislation comes out on 29 February 2008 regarding changes to the Asylum and Immigration Act and employers will be required to undertake further relevant checks to ensure employees have the required documentation. The penalty fines increases from £5,000 to £10,000 per employee. Also, there are going to be further penalties that the officer of the Company who does not ensure that these checks are done, could be imprisoned.

Further information on this change will be included in our next Newsletter.


Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

This Act comes into effect on 6 April 2008 and was the subject of our email bulletin dated September 2007.

There is a brief overview of this Act on our website http://www.hrsolutions-uk.com/human-resource-articles/human-resources-articles-corporate-manslaughter.htm or you can download the actual full act: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/20070019.htm

However, this Act has a significant impact upon your duty of care relating to your employees who drive in the course of their work. Therefore, to help you understand your responsibilities in this respect please see our article on Work Related Driving on our website.


Further Changes

There will be changes to the Standard rates of maternity, paternity and adoption pay as from April, but as yet, they have not been published, but we will inform you as soon as they are.

However, the Government's plans to extend SMP, Maternity Allowance and Statutory Adoption Pay have been delayed. The plan was to extend these benefits from 29 weeks to 52 weeks and to introduce Additional Paternity Leave and Pay and these have been put back until 2009. The change to Paternity Leave and Pay is to call it Additional Paternity Leave which would give employed fathers the right to an additional 26 weeks off work (with pay) to care for the child in its first year if the mother returned to work and has not used her full entitlement to paid maternity leave. There are no guidelines on these changes yet, possibly due to the complexity of certainly applying the paternity leave v maternity leave rules. Again, we will keep you informed.

As informed to you earlier in January, Greg has joined the HR Solutions team and we have now set up a recruitment page on the website entitled Employment Opportunities. If you have a vacancy and would like us to place it on our website we are offering you the opportunity during January and February to do this for FREE!!! Therefore, why not take a look at this section of our website to see how we can advertise your vacancy and then you can talk to us about how we can help you, whether its just emailing on the applications or helping you with the actual management of the recruitment.

Also, please note that we have changed our email addresses and would ask you to ensure that you whitelist us to ensure you receive all our email bulletins and newsletters. Our email addresses are:

enquiries@hrsolutions-uk.com

Carol - cag@hrsolutions-uk.com

Greg - gmg@hrsolutions-uk.com

With all these changes don't let them get you down and tied up in all the red tape, call us for an informal chat about any of our services or how we can help you on any people management issue you may have.

Published: Feb 2008
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