Employment law stories in the news this week – 10.02.2014 to 16.02.2014

MoJIn the latest of our series of posts on employment law stories in the news this week, we take a look at ten employment law-related stories that have made the news between 10 February 2014 and 16 February 2014.

  1. Perth care home ordered to pay £7,200 in compensation to ex-employee – An employment tribunal upheld the claim of Caroline MacDonald of St John Street against Lorraine Caddell of St Johnstoun’s Nursing Home, Barossa Place. Tribunal judge Ian McFatridge ruled that Ms MacDonald’s dismissal was both substantively and procedurally unfair (The Courier)
  2. Police facing £15m bill for forcing 600 cops to take retirement – West Midlands Police could face a crippling £15 million bill for unlawfully forcing 600 of its most experienced officers into early retirement. Between 2010 and 2013 the force imposed ‘Pension Regulation A19’ in a cost-cutting measure, which terminated the careers of hundreds of cops under the rank of chief officer who served for 30 or more years (The Birmingham Mail)
  3. High Court rejects union plea on employment tribunal fees – The High Court has rejected a trade union plea to halt the government’s imposition of fees on workers who bring employment tribunal proceedings against their employers. Unison, the largest public sector union, had urged the court to quash what it (The Financial Times)
  4. New Health and Work Service to get long-term sick back to work – People off sick for more than four weeks are to be offered advice to get them back to work more quickly under a scheme being set up by the government. The Health and Work Service, which will cover England, Wales and Scotland, will offer non-compulsory medical assessments and treatment plans (BBC)
  5. Claimant faces record costs after tribunal – An employment tribunal has ordered a claimant who unsuccessfully took a local authority to tribunal to pay record costs for an individual. Dr D B Makanjuola had taken his employer, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, to the tribunal, making 69 separate allegations of discrimination and matters arising from protected disclosures (The Law Society Gazette)
  6. Devon health boss Dr Paula Vasco-Knight suspended after ‘nepotism’ tribunal – A hospital boss has been suspended from her job after being criticised by a tribunal over whistle-blowers who accused her of nepotism. South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust said chief executive Dr Paula Vasco-Knight would be suspended during an investigation into her actions (BBC)
  7. Burglars and thieves no longer need to give full details of criminal pasts to employers – Burglars and thieves will no longer have to tell employers about their criminal past when they apply for jobs, ministers have said. Currently anyone who has served a sentence of six months or less has to declare their criminal history going back seven years. Under the changes, they will only have to disclose any convictions going back two years (The Telegraph)
  8. Barclays to axe up to 12,000 jobs – Barclays is to cut as many as 12,000 jobs this year, of which more than half will come from redundancies of UK-based staff as the bank attempts to reduce costs. The bank said the redundancies would include 820 senior managers, consisting of 220 managing directors and 600 director-level employees, as part of what the lender described as a “streamlining” programme (The Telegraph)
  9. Sellafield is ordered to pay £22,000 to bipolar man – Sellafield has been ordered to pay £22,431 compensation after refusing to employ a man with bipolar disorder. Steven Larg was one of 7,000 people who applied for 200 operatives vacancies at the nuclear plant in 2012. He was successful in getting through to the final stages of the recruitment process where he was given a conditional job offer (The North-West Evening Mail)
  10. Redundancies at Nottinghamshire County Council will cost £13.7 million – The true cost of making more than 750 people redundant at Notts County Council has been revealed. The authority has set aside £13.7 million for redundancy – almost £4 million more than they spent on libraries this financial year (The Nottingham Post)