In the most recent edition of our Need to Know employment law newsletter, we warn about the fine line between workplace ‘banter’ and bullying, explain the government’s recent amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and give an update on the new compensation limits and statutory payment rates coming into force from April 2025.
- Beware the fine line between workplace ‘banter’ and bullying
- Recent amendments to the Govt’s Employment Rights Bill
- New employee compensation limits and statutory payment rates in force from April 2025
We also have included our usual HR Bullets – which cover other significant employment law updates from the past month.
HR Bullets
- The EAT held that an employment tribunal had failed to properly apply the “range of reasonable responses” test in an unfair dismissal case and had substituted its view for that of the employer. In this case, a bus driver, Mr Taylor, had been unfairly dismissed by his employer after having a physical altercation with another driver. The tribunal said that his dismissal was unfair based on evidential issues with CCTV footage, flaws with the disciplinary process and that in another similar incident, a bus driver had been reinstated. The EAT held that the tribunal had erred in its analysis of reasonableness, based on a substitution of its view for that of the employer and its analysis of Metroline’s procedure. The case has been remitted to a fresh employment tribunal;
Metroline Travel Ltd v Taylor (debarred) [2025] EAT 4 - An employment tribunal held that supermarket retail workers (predominantly female) carried out work of equal value to distribution centre workers (predominantly male), for the purposes of section 65 of the Equality Act 2010;
Brierley and others v Asda Stores Ltd ET/2406372/08 - The EAT held that an employment tribunal erred in its approach to the taking of judicial notice of the childcare disparity. The tribunal held that the requirement that the Claimant travel significant distances was a provision, criterion or practice (PCP) that, due to her childcare responsibilities put her at a significant disadvantage because of her sex. The tribunal was found to have automatically assumed that travelling significant distances disadvantages women because of the childcare disparity when it should have carefully analysed whether travelling significant distances does actually disadvantage women;
Marston (Holdings) Ltd v Perkins [2025] EAT 20 - An employment tribunal held that a partner had been directly discriminated against because of age when his application to extend his membership, to avoid compulsory retirement, was refused;
Scott v Walker Morris LLP ET/1806503/2023 - The Court of Appeal has held that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 does not require the issue of a gender recognition certificate recording an applicant’s gender as ‘non-binary’ where that designation has been acquired by the applicant under the law of a state or territory outside the United Kingdom. Furthermore, that interpretation of the Act was not incompatible with Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There were very weighty reasons that proportionately justified the difference in treatment between those with a foreign-acquired non-binary gender and those with a foreign-acquired binary (i.e. male or female) gender, such as the coherence of the legal and administrative system in the UK and the cost implications of having to change the current system;
R (on the application of Castellucci) v Gender Recognition Panel [2024] EWHC 54 - The EAT has held that an employment tribunal erred in concluding that the Claimant was not a worker as defined by S.230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 on the basis that such a finding would be inconsistent with conclusions that had been reached in a prior decision where the Claimant was found not to be an employee. The tribunal’s earlier finding that the essential elements of the employee status test were not met, including as to ‘control’ and the intentions of the parties, should not have been regarded as automatically precluding the conclusion that the Claimant was a worker;
Dr Mark Ter-Berg v 1) Mr Parul Malde 2) Dr Colin Hancock [2025] EAT 23 - In Korpysa v Impact Recruitment Services, the Claimant was employed by the Respondent and placed with Howdens as a warehouse operative. Howdens said that it no longer needed her. The Claimant rang the Respondent a week later. The Respondent alleged that she asked for her holiday pay and her P45 as she had a new job. The Respondent thought she had resigned. The Claimant alleged she had not asked for her P45 and had not resigned. Following the issue of her P45, the Claimant brought claims for unfair dismissal and age discrimination. The age discrimination claims were dismissed but the case was remitted to a fresh tribunal to consider whether the Respondent had shown that the factual reason for dismissal was SOSR, and, if so, whether it was fair or unfair;
Korpysa v Impact Recruitment Services [2025] EAT 22 - In Easton v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Border Force), the Claimant applied for a job with the Respondent. The application form included a free-text box for ‘Employment History’, where he listed only years of employment. This concealed a three-month gap after he had been dismissed for gross misconduct from another Home Office role. He did not mention the dismissal or the gap during his interview. He was dismissed for gross misconduct when this was discovered, and the Claimant brought an unfair dismissal claim. The employment tribunal held that the dismissal was fair, and the Claimant appealed. The EAT dismissed the appeal;
Easton v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Border Force) [2025] EAT 15 - The Court of Appeal has held that an employment tribunal correctly determined the claims brought by the Claimant, a litigant in person, as identified in the list of issues agreed by the parties prior to the final hearing. The tribunal was under a duty to identify and address the claims that emerged from an objective analysis of the Claimant’s statements of case and a claim for discriminatory dismissal had not been pleaded. The only basis on which the EAT could properly have allowed an appeal against the tribunal’s decision and decided that the list of issues should have been revisited at the outset of the hearing to consider whether a discriminatory dismissal claim was advanced, was if the tribunal’s conclusion to determine only the issues identified in the agreed list was one which no reasonable tribunal could have reached. No such exceptional circumstances had been shown;
Moustache v Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2025] EWCA Civ 185