Welcome to the Wrigleys Employment Law Bulletin, September 2020.
Last week Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced a new scheme aimed at helping employers to retain workers in “viable” jobs over the next six months. In our first article we look at what we know so far about the Job Support Scheme and consider the implications of the scheme for employers contemplating redundancies.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has, of course, another month to run and HMRC are currently reported to be investigating 27,000 potentially fraudulent claims under the scheme. We look at the enforcement action likely to be taken by HMRC and the steps for employers who wish to report inaccurate claims.
We report on the Court of Appeal's decision in Robinson v Department for Work and Pensions which clarifies the interaction between claims for a failure to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee and for discrimination arising from disability. In this case the employer's mishandled attempts to put reasonable adjustments in place was not discrimination arising from her disability.
In the interesting case of Sullivan v Bury Street Capital Ltd, the EAT considered whether a claimant's paranoid delusions had a long term substantial adverse effect on his ability to carry out day to day activities and so qualified as a disability under the Equality Act 2010.
The EAT's decision in the case of K v L highlights the importance of setting out disciplinary allegations clearly when inviting an employee to a disciplinary hearing. This case also sheds useful light on when an employee can be fairly dismissed for conduct which might damage the employer's reputation.
And in our question of the month for September, we consider how employers should handle flexible working requests to work remotely in the current crisis.
We hope to see you at one of our upcoming webinars. Our next webinar on 6 October is on the subject of “Equality in the workplace - atypical working, zero hours and ethical issues”. Please see the links below for details on how to book and how to access our recorded webinars.
We are always interested in feedback or suggestions for topics that may be of interest to you, so please do get in touch.
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