Do voluntary redundancies count as a dismissal?

If the business has areas requiring an increased workforce whilst others require a reduced workforce, staff can be retrained and redeployed across the organisation or even across a wider group of companies. This will not reduce the wage bill but will avoid the need for redundancies. Making fundamental changes to an employee’s role and duties will require their agreement following a fair selection and consultation process.

MHFAs are not qualified mental health medical professionals and they should not be diagnosing or giving medical advice, however, their training will equip them to provide initial support to those experiencing symptoms of mental ill health, and to signpost to further professional help when needed. The MHFA training makes the boundaries of the MHFA role very clear and there should be clearly defined role specifications, procedures and support pathways in place to ensure that individuals are referred on appropriately. There should be peer support in place for MHFAs and a system in place to ensure no individual or individuals are overloaded.

 Aside from the CBILS Scheme, the Government have, or are in the process of, implementing several different schemes to support businesses financially through the Covid-19 outbreak.

It is absolutely critical to creating a safe workplace and to making workers feel secure.

This could include floor markings every 2m (as we’ve seen in grocery stores), stopping or limiting/staggering access to communal or common areas such as toilets and kitchens, rearranging workstations to maintain a 2 metre distance or, where this is not possible (for example in manufacturing facilities or production lines), erecting physical barriers and avoiding face to face working, encouraging the use of stairs and discouraging lift-use, designing a one-way system for entry and exit and looking at aircon/heating systems to see if any modifications are possible to prevent the spread of airborne particles. If you can increase ventilation in your workplace, it will help reduce risk.

The government has published detailed social distancing guidance for workplaces across sectors including manufacturing, retail, offices, construction and transport; it has also promised to continue to add to this.

The Business and Planning Act 2020 entered the statute books on 22 July 2020. Section 18 of the Act includes provisions for the extension of the date by which a reserved matters application must be submitted where the original date falls between 23 March 2020 and 31 December 2020. Where the original time limit for the submission of reserved matters is on or after 19 August 2020, the relevant conditions will be automatically read as requiring the reserved matters application to be submitted by 1 May 2021.

Where the original time limit for the submission of reserved matters is before 19 August 2020, an application will need to be made to the LPA for an Additional Environmental Approval (“AEA”), which the LPA must determine within 28 days otherwise the approval is deemed to be provided. The purpose of the AEA is to consider whether the environmental assessments carried out at the time of the original outline determination remain valid and up to date, and where that is not the case, the AEA will be refused. In such circumstances a new planning application will be required where an application is now out of time to comply with the original date for submission of reserved matters.