Parental leave is not equivalent to statutory maternity leave
July 25th 2019By Joanne Stronach Head of Employment & HR Two recent cases involving fathers taking paternity leave have highlighted a defining difference between parental leave and a mother’s statutory maternity leave. One male employee who worked for a technology firm sued for sex discrimination after his employers insisted he should not be paid at the same rate as mothers on statutory maternity leave. A similar case saw a policeman claim sex…
Property owner must pay £81,000 for work completed on cancelled job
July 22nd 2019By Stephanie Johnson Associate A dispute between a property owner and builder has been settled by the High Court, with the owner ordered to pay for work completed, even though he was not happy with it and the job was cancelled. The parties had entered into a JCT minor works building contract for work to be done on the owner’s property. However, after some initial work had been completed, the…
Ambulance staff entitled to have overtime included in holiday pay
July 18th 2019By Joanne Stronach Head of Employment & HR A court ruling in a dispute between ambulance workers and the NHS could affect employers across all sectors when it comes to factoring overtime into holiday pay. The dispute centred on whether ambulance staff were entitled to have an average amount of their voluntary overtime pay included when calculating their holiday pay. The Employment Tribunal ruled in favour of the NHS Trust,…
Live The Dream #FiveReasonsWhy
July 16th 2019Haltwhistle is an ideal location to enjoy a great career and a fantastic standard of living which will be the envy of many of your family and friends. Located in the centre of Britain with excellent road and rail connections, you can explore all the country has to offer in every direction – Hadrian’s Wall and the Northumberland Coast, the Lake District and the Scottish Borders, and all the city…
Huge fines being threatened by the ICO in two landmark cases
July 16th 2019Joanne Stronach Head of Employment & HR gives her views on recent headline. The ICO has issued a ‘Notice of Intention’ (NOI) to fine British Airways a huge £183.39 million for GDPR infringements. It is for a breach that took place last September, in which personal data of approximately 500,000 BA customers was compromised. The ICO has also issued a NOI to fine Marriott £99 million for a cyber incident…
New measures being planned to ensure SMEs are paid on time
July 15th 2019By Carly Davies Credit Control & Debt Recovery The government is planning to ease the cash flow burden on small firms by making the boards of large companies accountable for late payments to suppliers. It is part of an ongoing effort to tackle the issue of late payment, which can be the difference between success and failure for many SMEs. Large companies could also face fines and have binding payment…
Worker was discriminated against because of poor language skills
July 11th 2019By Joanne Stronach Head of Employment & HR The Employment Tribunal has ruled that a transport worker was discriminated against because of his ‘lack of command’ of the English language. Mr A Khawaja, from Pakistan, worked for Transport for London (TfL) but was overlooked for development opportunities such as training and conference calls. The office held conference calls twice a day and the team members also took part in regular…
KAPOW! Superhero Challenge raised over £450
July 11th 2019On Saturday 6th July #TeamCartmells Cape Crusaders took on the KAPOW! Superhero Challenge to raise money for Hospice at Home West Cumbria. Our fab five donned orange capes and masks while navigating an obstacle course made up of crazy challenges. Lydia, Mandy, Gemma, Laura Murphy and Lauren arrived at Cockermouth Rugby club on a beautiful sunny day and kicked things off with a Moky Fit dance warm up with CFM’s…
Court ruling enables company to remove estranged director
July 8th 2019By Mark Aspin Director A High Court ruling has enabled a company to remove a director who had become estranged from the business following a dispute over alleged breach of duties. The company had two members and four directors. Three of the directors, including the majority shareholder, believed that the fourth director, Mr Christopher Stephen Jones, who was the minority shareholder, had acted in serious breach of his duties. In…
Unmarried fathers – do you have parental responsibility for your child?
July 4th 2019By Laura Ousby Solicitor Unmarried couples often assume they have the same automatic rights as married couples but unfortunately, this is not the case. For unmarried fathers, one of the most alarming consequences is that they may suddenly discover they don’t have official parental responsibility for their children, even if they have been caring for them and looking after them for several years. We should perhaps clarify what is meant…
