At the Conservative Party Conference today George Osborne
announced that the Government intends to make it "much less
risky for businesses to hire people". In particular the
Government plans to increase the period before an employee can make
an unfair dismissal claim from one to two years from April 2012. It
will also introduce a fee for taking a case to an employment
tribunal that "litigants only get back if they
win".
This announcement is not entirely unexpected as last week BIS
published a document confirming that the unfair dismissal period
would be increased from one to two years and that fees would be
introduced for lodging employment tribunal cases to tackle
vexatious claims. Although BIS subsequently stated that the
increase for unfair dismissal claims had not been confirmed many
commentators considered it was merely a matter of time before
formal confirmation was made.
To access the revised BIS publication please click here.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments.
The original publication date for this article was 03/10/2011.