In this latest edition of our ‘Need To Know’ employment and HR newsletter, we look at the key employment changes proposed by our new government, a recent Employment Appeal Tribunal case of Piepenbrock v The London School of Economics and Political Science where the EAT granted an indefinite anonymity order to protect a non-witness and non-party to proceedings, and an article about how the Insolvency Service has confirmed that there will be no criminal action against P&O Ferries for the much publicised mass redundancies they undertook in March of this year.
We also have included our usual HR Bullets – which cover other significant employment law updates from the past month.
- New government: Key Employment changes – Aleksandra Traczyk
- Anonymity Orders: A Balancing Act – Florence Smart
- No criminal action against P&O Ferries – Molly Tarring
HR Bullets
- The High Court held that a school was not vicariously liable for the acts of an individual who undertook a work experience placement as this did not amount to an employment relationship (MXX v A Secondary School)
- The EAT held that it does not matter what the reason is for a fundamental change in activities before and after the transfer in deciding whether a service provision change has occurred unless there is a deliberate engineering to avoid the consequences of TUPE (Tuitt v London Borough of Richmond upon Thames)
- The EAT granted an anonymity order in favour of a non-party and non-witness to the proceedings, who was the subject of false lurid accusations of a sexual nature in the Tribunal proceedings (Piepenbrock v London School of Economics)
- An employee who had caught Covid two and a half weeks before her dismissal, and who was diagnosed with long Covid six weeks after, was not disabled within the meaning of s.6 of the Equality Act 2010 at the time of her dismissal (Quinn v Sense Scotland)
- The EAT held that the time for submission of an employer’s appeal against a default judgment should be extended because of its CEO’s ADHD and depression. The existence and effect of these mental impairments were a material and substantial part of the explanation for why the appeal was submitted late (MTN-1 Ltd v O’Daly)