The High Court has held that a 12-month non-competition post-termination restrictive covenant in an agreement between a financial adviser and his employer was enforceable. Under a "goodwill agreement", the financial adviser had been paid for the goodwill in the client base he brought with him to the firm, but was...

From 6 May 2014 any employee wanting to bring a Tribunal claim will first have to contact ACAS and go through early conciliation. When they contact ACAS they will fill in a form giving the details of who should be contacted at the employer company. ACAS realise that in some...

We are reminded this week that employers who take part in public sector tendering are at risk of potentially business closing claims if they do not carry out proper due diligence, and this is particularly the case regarding Equal Pay. In a Scottish case, women traffic wardens have won the right...

A question on any TUPE service provision change is whether the new provider of the service will be carrying on the same activities. If not, no TUPE. In this case a transport company provided warehouse and distribution services for a client. That contract ended and a new company took on the...

The Appeal Tribunal this week reminded us all that Custom and Practice as a way of forming contractual terms is very much alive and well. In this case the employer had consistently paid the statutory redundancy, but without a cap on a weeks pay. They then carried out a redundancy where...

A recent case has established that LLPs rank as “associated employers” when it comes to claims under the Equal Pay Act.  This means that if you are an LLP, and are inheriting employees from a Council under TUPE, then those employees are able to compare themselves to employees back at the...

The courts have looked at whether an employer can take account of a final warning which is being appealed, at the time a fresh offence and therefore dismissal was being considered. The answer is that an employer can take the final warning into account, even though it was being appealed. The...

In a case published last week, the Court of Appeal had said an employer cannot rely solely on an Occupational Health Report when deciding if an employee is disabled. On the face of it this poses problems for employers - if they cannot rely on a medical report, what can they...

The European Court has ruled on an English case that a worker taking annual leave must be paid the commission he would have earned had he been at work. Therefore, it would now seem that when a worker takes leave, he or she must be compensated not just for basic...

It was announced last night that the House of Lords have rejected the introduction of Employee/Shareholder contracts. These were the contracts whereby employees could swap employment rights for shares. You may remember that we have been critical of the value of this new measure. The measure may be sent back to...