In the latest edition of our Need to Know employment law newsletter we look at what the govt’s new immigration white paper means for employers, highlight the proposed legislative changes from a new report on forced labour in global supply chains, and provide a timely reminder on the legal principles underpinning constructive unfair dismissal.
- UK Immigration White Paper 2025: What It Means for Employers and HR Teams
- Joint Committee on Human Rights recommends Govt action on Forced Labour in UK Supply Chains
- The Last Straw that Broke the Employment Contract – Constructive Unfair Dismissal ruling
We also have included our usual HR Bullets – which cover other significant employment law updates from the past month.
HR Bullets
- The Court of Appeal upheld the EAT’s decision that time workers spent travelling to and from home and work sites was not “time work” for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015. It was necessary to look at the Regulations as a whole and travelling from home to a place of work is not “time work” unless there is work being done while travelling; Revenue and Customs Commissioners v Taylors Services Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 956
- The County Court held that the exclusion of a transgender woman (with a Gender Recognition Certificate) from the female category of competition in pool was not discriminatory. Applying For Women in Scotland, the correct comparator for the Claimant was a man without the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Such a man would have also been excluded from pool’s female category, so the Claimant was unable to show different treatment; Haynes v The English Blackpool Association Claim No K01CT207
- The Court of Appeal upheld the Tribunal’s finding of direct race discrimination by a Council. The Claimant’s comparators were sufficiently similar to mean that the different treatment supported an inference of discrimination. The Tribunal rightly drew adverse inferences from the Council’s disclosure failures and found its explanations lacked credibility, failing to rebut the presumption of discrimination; Leicester City Council v Parmar [2025] EWCA Civ 952
- The EAT held that the Tribunal had erred in its time limit determination of several claims of racial harassment. The Tribunal had found that the incidents occurred and had a harassing effect on the Claimant, and as such, the perpetrators’ recollections were irrelevant; Logo v Payone GmbH [2025] EAT 95
- The EAT held that the ‘final straw’ prompting an employee’s resignation in a constructive dismissal claim did not, by itself, need to be a serious breach of contract. Instead, what mattered was the overall pattern of behaviour and whether this cumulatively amounted to a breach of trust and confidence; Marshall v McPherson Ltd [2025] EAT 100
- The EAT held that the Tribunal had erred in failing to consider whether acts of disability discrimination amounted to repudiatory breaches of contract and if so, whether the breaches had contributed to an employee’s decision to resign; Wainwright v Cennox Plc [2023] EAT 101
- The EAT upheld the Tribunal’s decision that the Claimant could not rely on email correspondence between her former employer and its legal adviser, which had been accidentally copied to her two days before she was dismissed, in support of her claim for victimisation. The emails were not subject to the ‘iniquity exception’; Shawcross v SMG Europe Holdings Limited and ors [2025] EAT 92