Who pays?
In general terms, if a dispute goes to court then the losing party will have to pay both their own and the winning party’s legal costs.
Ward Hadaway can offer a number of options to help your financial outlay, including acting on a fixed fee basis or a no win no fee arrangement.
We have been offering no win no fee arrangements now for over 20 years. We know that good legal advice is expensive and in most cases, if the case is strong, we can work with you to find a way of bringing the claim. Costs will be discussed with you in detail before you have to pay anything.
Related FAQs
All organisations have underperformers. Capability is a potentially fair reason to dismiss and is separate to any redundancy procedures.
Generally, capability falls into either absences through illness or underperformance in the role. Those who are absent through sickness can be furloughed, but when furlough comes to an end they will need to go back onto sickness. If you are looking to tackle absence then you need to tackle long term and short term absence in a different way.
Long term absence: You need to establish whether the employee is able to return to work (with or without reasonable adjustments) in the medium term. This requires medical opinion and be careful of disability issues. Reasonable adjustments are likely to be important.
Short term absence: You will need to demonstrate that you have fair absence triggers in place and there is normally be a 3 stage procedure: warning and final warning followed by dismissal on notice. Each stage needs a fair procedure, with written information, a fair hearing and the opportunity to appeal. Be careful of disability issues.
As for underperformance: To tackle this, you will need to have clear SMART objectives in place and evidence of the employee failing to meet these. There would then normally be a 3 stage procedure: warning and final warning followed by dismissal on notice. Each stage needs a fair procedure, with written information, a fair hearing and the opportunity to appeal.
No one factor will determine status and the outcomes will differ depending on the nature of the work being carried out and the business of the end user client.
When you have carried out an assessment based on the relevant factors you can either get in touch with us to discuss further, check your answers against HMRC’s CEST tool or do both before making a final determination.
Undeniably and understandably BAME staff, as well as those staff who are identified as being at a higher risk, are going to have high levels of stress and anxiety. For some, this may become of such severity that those staff should be considered to be disabled under the Equality Act 2010. The question as to whether someone is disabled is one that should be answered in conjunction with appropriate medical advice. But the question about how to support any staff suffering with stress and anxiety should not be left until that stage. Proactive steps need to be taken and expert advice obtained on what support measures should be put in place. We know that many NHS organisations are already giving the mental wellbeing of their staff the highest priority.
From our perspective, we would ask managers to be mindful that stress and anxiety is likely to feature in how an individual reacts to questions about the level of risk to their health and the impact on their duties. The conversations with some staff may not be easy to have and may be met with challenge.
For those staff who’s stress and anxiety is such that it would qualify as a disability, reasonable adjustments will need to be considered to the processes that you are applying.
An additional point to consider – it might be worth writing to all staff, asking them to come forward if they have any health conditions that they think you ought to be aware of, assuring them that such information is being given in the strictest confidence. You want to make sure that you are taking the appropriate measures to ensure their health and safety.
The guidance is helpful and is likely to be useful to businesses as they seek to respond to the crisis and to restart their business activities as lockdown is eased. However, there remain outstanding questions. For example, can collaboration to prevent widespread insolvencies be viewed as in the interest of consumers? Businesses need to remain aware of the extremely high stakes involved in relation to competition law. Businesses contemplating collaboration with competitors should take legal advice before doing so.
On Wednesday 8 July 2020 as part of a summer ‘mini-budget’, Rishi Sunak delivered the Government’s response to the threat to millions of jobs due to the existing furlough arrangements being wound down from August 2020 until it planned to close at the end of October 2020. In a wide-ranging speech to Parliament, the Chancellor announced a number of schemes to look to protect jobs beyond October 2020, in particular in certain sectors and for those aged 18-24. As the Government releases further information over the coming days and weeks, we will add to these FAQs.