2013 is going to be a year of changes in employment law and we thought it would be useful to keep you updated with the schedule for the changes.

1 February 2013: Tribunal compensation limits will increase

The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will rise from £72,300 to £74,200 and the maximum amount of a week’s pay, used to calculate statutory redundancy pay (among other things), will rise from £430 to £450.

March 2013: Equality Act changes

Individuals will no longer have the very specific protection for harassment by third parties in the Equality Act (e.g. where an employee is being harassed by a contractor).   This is, however, more of a technical point as the individuals will most likely still be able to claim protection from harassment by third parties in a work context under remaining discrimination law.

March 2013: Equality Act changes – discrimination questionnaires

At the moment employees or ex-employees may serve Questionnaires on employers requiring information about alleged discrimination.  It can be very burdensome for employers to answer these Questionnaires. From March onwards, individuals who are considering bringing or who have brought discrimination claims will no longer be able to use the Questionnaires to seek information from the employer.

8 March 2013: Increase to parental leave

Currently, after a parent (or anyone who has parental responsibilities) has been employed for one year, they are entitled to take 13 weeks’ unpaid parental leave at any time between the child’s birth and their fifth birthday (or 18 weeks’ unpaid leave until the child is 18 where the child is disabled).  From 8 March 2013, the amount of unpaid parental leave that can be taken per child will increase from 13 to 18 weeks. There is a rule restricting parental leave to a maximum of 4 weeks’ unpaid parental leave per year and this will not change.

6 April 2013: Collective redundancy consultation period

Where there are 100 or more affected employees, the statutory collective consultation period will be reduced from the current 90 days consultation to 45 days consultation.  Where between 20 and 99 employees are affected, the statutory collective consultation period will remain at 30 days.

Also, employees whose fixed term contracts are due to expire will be excluded from the specific collective consultation requirements, although employers will still need to be careful as fixed term employees may still be able to claim unfair dismissal (usually depending on their length of service) and discrimination, so in most cases employers will still need to follow a fair process with these employees.

April 2013: New statutory payment rates will apply as follows

From 6 April 2013: Statutory sick pay will increase from £85.85 to £86.70, with the weekly earnings threshold also rising from £107 to £109.

From 7 April 2013: The standard rates for statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay and statutory adoption pay will increase from £135.45 to £136.78. The weekly earnings threshold for these payments will rise from £107 to £109. Maternity allowance will increase from £135.45 to £136.78, with the earnings threshold remaining at £30.

April 2013: Whistleblowing

In order to qualify for protection as a whistleblower, individuals will need to show they have a reasonable belief that the issue about which they are blowing the whistle is in the public interest (at the moment the whistleblowing could arguably be about any breach of any legal obligation e.g. a breach of the individual’s employment contract).

April 2013: Employee shareholder status

Following the Chancellor’s announcement on 8 October 2012, an employer and employee will be able to agree that, in return for an individual being an “employee shareholder” (instead of just an “employee”), the company will issue or allot a minimum of £2,000 worth of shares to the individual. The original proposal for the value of the shares to be capped at £50,000 was removed by the government in its response to the consultation.

The employee shareholder would have the same rights as an employee with the following exceptions:

• No right to request time off for study or training.
• No right to make a flexible working request (although there might in some situations still be a discrimination issue if flexible working is denied).
• No right not to be unfairly dismissed (except in health and safety cases, automatically unfair cases, or cases where the dismissal is discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010).
• No right to a statutory redundancy payment.
• The employee must give 16 weeks’ notice if they want to return early from statutory maternity, adoption or additional paternity leave, rather than the 8 weeks that applies to everyone else.

Summer 2013: Fees will be introduced into the Employment Tribunal

The government has stated that from summer 2013, employees in Tribunal claims will have to pay fees to bring Tribunal claims. They will have to pay two fees – one on issuing the claim, and one on proceeding to hearing. Employers will also have to pay fees if they bring a counter claim. There are also plans to bring in fees for making applications to the Tribunal (including applications for judicial mediation, setting aside a default judgment and applications to dismiss a claim). Tribunal judges will have the power to order the unsuccessful party to reimburse fees paid by the successful party, although this will not be automatic. As in the civil courts, where employees can prove that they cannot afford to pay any or part of the fees, they may be entitled to a full or partial fee remission.

There will be two levels of fees. Simpler cases (such as claims for unpaid wages or a redundancy payment) will cost £160 to issue the claim and £250 to go to Tribunal, whereas more complex cases (such as unfair dismissal and/or discrimination) will cost £250 to issue the claim and £950 for the hearing.  Judicial mediation is set to cost £600 and will be payable by the employer.

Expected during 2013: The following provisions in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill 2012-13 are due to come into force (no date has so far been set) provided the Bill is passed as currently drafted:

• Early Mandatory ACAS conciliation – claimants in Tribunal claims will have to give details of the dispute to ACAS first; there will then be a one month pre claim conciliation period where ACAS will try to negotiate settlement of the claim.
• Financial penalties for employers – employers could be fined an additional sum on top of any damages if they lose – at the moment this would be between £100 and £5,000. This will not be an automatic award, and will be reduced by 50% if the employer pays within 21 days.
• Unfair dismissal compensatory award – currently there is a cap which applies across the board to all employers regardless of size or the individual’s salary. There are proposals to change this so that the limit may be either (i) between £25,882 and £77,646, or (ii) a number of weeks’ of the employee’s pay (minimum of 52 weeks). The details are unclear but the cap may differ for different employers.
• Pre termination negotiations. With some exceptions, an offer made or discussion held with an employee with a view to terminating employment on terms to be agreed cannot be taken into account as evidence by the employment tribunal in a subsequent unfair dismissal case.  This would not apply to other claims and therefore the discussion could, for example, be used in a discrimination claim. This is similar to the existing situation where employers often hold off the record/without prejudice discussions with employees. In reality, conversations under the new system are likely to carry the same risks as existing without prejudice conversations.
• Compulsory pay audits – Employment Tribunals will be able to order employers to carry out pay audits where an employer is found guilty of gender discrimination in relation to pay.