As if small business didn’t have enough on their plates there are a whole raft of changes on the way in respect of Employment Law so brace yourselves.
- It will be more expensive to make redundancies from 1st February since the maximum week’s pay used for calculating redundancy payments will increase from £380 to £400.
- Taking an employer to tribunal will become even more attractive when the maximum compensatory award for unfair
dismissal increases from £65,300 to £68,400.
- For dismissals that take effect before 1st February 2011 the current rates will apply.
- The good news is that the proposal to extend maternity entitlement to 20 weeks full pay has been dropped by the EU, which takes the pressure off small businesses.
- Shared paternity leave will apply for babies due on or after 3rd April 2011. This allows the father to take part of the mother’s maternity leave so as to allow the mother to return to work early. For the first time men may take
13 weeks paid paternity leave in addition to the current two weeks. For employers, we are yet to see how this will work in practice.
- Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) and Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP) will increase from £124.88 to £128.73 as of 3rd April.
- From 6th April Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will increase from £79.15 to £81.60 per week.
- Finally from April 6th, employers will not be able to issue new notifications of retirement using the default retirement age. An employer that issues a notification of retirement before 6 April 2011 will be able to retire the employee if his or her retirement date is before 1 October 2011.
And dare we mention that the Agency Workers Regulations will be another major challenge in 2011
Author: Chris Slay
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