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Employment Briefing 06/02/2025

In this Employment Briefing you’ll find articles from Irwin Mitchell, information on the upcoming statutory right to take neonatal care leave and pay, and free upcoming webinars on managing public money, understanding pay implications of the Employment Rights Bill, and Teach in FE for potential candidates.

Personal liability for discrimination

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers are liable for anything done by a member of their staff in the course of their employment unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it, and most claimants don't bother adding named individuals as separate respondents unless they're worried that their employer may not remain solvent and/or they want the people responsible for their distress to really suffer. However, in Baldwin v Cleves School (1), Hodges (2) and Miller (3) the EAT had to decide whether a head teacher and a teacher appointed to mentor the claimant were personally liable for two acts of discrimination. This IM briefing tells us more.

Neonatal care leave and pay

From 6 April 2025 eligible employees will have a new statutory right to take neonatal care leave and pay. These changes, brought about by the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023, aim to support parents whose children require neonatal care shortly after they are born. You can find out more here.

Can you sack an employee for lying on their CV?

There’s a difference between a candidate thinking creatively about how their skills meet the requirements of the job they’re applying for, and one who lies about their experience, the reason why they left their previous job or their qualifications. Discovering an employee has lied on their CV is challenging, particularly if they’ve already started work. This IM briefing provides more information.

Sexual Harassment – real-life case scenarios

The types of conduct that may cross the line into sexual harassment can be confusing. In this briefing, Jo from IM considers five real-life cases.

The Carers Leave Act 2023 – review report findings

The Act came into force in April 2024 and allows employees to take up to one week of unpaid leave per year to care for a relative or dependant with a long-term care need. A new report: The Carer's Leave Act 2023: six months on considers what employers are doing to support staff and analyses whether the new legislation is having a positive impact on the people it was designed to help.

The report makes a number of recommendations, one of which is joining the Employers for Carers(which currently includes a couple of college members) and to becoming Carer Confident through their benchmarking scheme.

Acas new neurodiversity at work advice

Acas has published new advice which aims to provide: “… tips for employers on how to raise awareness, be inclusive, sensitive, and stay within the law when managing neurodiversity at work." You can find out more here.

Managing Public Money information sessions

ESFA has been working with ETF to deliver sessions which aim to support colleges’ understanding of Managing Public Money (MPM). All sessions are currently fully booked but you can join the waiting lists at this link: Managing Public Money | ETF Booking

Webinar: Understanding pay implications of Employment Rights Bill

One of the biggest questions to come out of the Employment Right Bill is the pay implications it will have. The Government’s commitment to making work pay will have a fundamental impact on employers due to:

  1. The introduction of genuine living wage
  2. The removal of age-discriminatory age bands
  3. The strengthening of worker protections.

To help answer your queries around this topic, HR Solutions are hosting a free webinar on 13th February at 10am, on Understanding Pay Implications of the Employment Rights Bill' to delve into how it will impact wages, and the budget consequences.

Recruitment of teacher and lay professionals for the TRA Professional Conduct Panels

On behalf of the SoS for Education, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) operates the system to oversee and regulate teachers’ conduct which includes holding a list of teachers who have been prohibited from teaching. To carry out the prohibition function, teacher and lay panellists are appointed by the SoS to sit on Professional Conduct Panels - convened to hear and consider only the most serious allegations of misconduct against teachers and to determine whether a recommendation for prohibition should be made.

Applications for these roles are currently open, with a closing date of 19 February, and you can find out more about the role and how to apply here.

Please pass this on to anyone you think may be interested, plus please do take a look yourself – it does look like a challenging but interesting (and very important) role.

HMRC webinars:

HMRC are running the following upcoming webinars, which your payroll colleagues may find beneficial:

    Statutory Maternity & Paternity Pay - 11 February 2025, 11:45 – 12:45

    This webinar is for anyone dealing with SMP and or SPP. It and will cover:

    • The qualifying conditions for these statutory payments
    • How much to pay using the GOV.UK calculator
    • How to claim back these statutory payments
    • Keeping in touch days
    • The records you need to keep

    Statutory Sick Pay - 12 February 2025, 13:45 – 14:45

    This webinar is for anyone dealing with SSP

    It will cover the qualifying conditions

    • Paying SSP

    How SSP is affected by:

    • Company sick pay
    • Holidays and Bank holidays
    • Agency, casual and term-time workers
    • What happens if not entitled to SSP
    • The records you need to keep

    Teach in FE webinar – aimed at potential candidates

    The DFE’s Teach in FE campaign team is hosting a webinar on Wednesday 19 February from 6.00 to 6:45pm, aimed at encouraging industry professionals to share their skills in FE teaching.  

    The session will: 

    • Discuss what experience and qualifications candidates might need. 
    • Feature insights from industry professionals who have successfully made the move into FE 
    • Explore common entry routes and the rewarding experiences of teaching in FE 

    The webinar will conclude with a Q&A session, offering attendees the opportunity to ask questions and gain further insights from a panel of experienced FE teachers and FE advisor. 

    Please do share this registration link with anyone you think may be interested, any candidate lists, recruitment pages or upcoming events: Start teaching in Further Education registration. If you have any question in the meantime, please email teachinfe.campaign@education.gov.uk.    

    AoC Equity Exchange events

    March sees two Equity Exchange events being hosted by colleges: 6 March at Nottingham College and 13 March at Peter Symonds College. It would be great to see you and/or colleagues there and you can find out more at this link.

    Targeted Retention Incentive (TRI)

    We recently had a meeting with the TRI team at DfE. In that meeting, DfE highlighted the importance of applications being authorised by employers as soon as possible, particularly as the application deadline approaches (end of March). Currently, applications are experiencing delays in being processed (once authorised), as they are referred to the student loans company as part of DfE’s process, which appears to be adding to the SLA.

    There could potentially be tax implications involved for employees if they receive their TRI payment from April 2025 onwards, especially if the employee intends on applying for the scheme again next academic year and receives their second payment before April 2026. Effectively, in this scenario, the employee will receive two payments within the same tax year, which *may* drag them into a higher tax bracket – hence the need to authorise any outstanding applications as soon as possible so TRI payments for this academic year can (hopefully) be made before April.

    FE HR Induction

    Thank you to those that have expressed interest in our FE HR Induction programme. The induction aims to give an overview of FE, providing valuable knowledge on our sector, as well as the challenges we face from a HR and industrial relations perspective.

    Our next induction will run on 26 February 2025, which has been fully booked. An additional session will be held in March to facilitate the high number of sign-ups we have received.

    Should you have any staff that you feel would benefit from the induction, please email antony.hines@aoc.co.uk and they will be added to an attendance list when the March date becomes available.

    AoC HR Community (LinkedIn)

    This is a space for HR staff to connect, collaborate and share expertise on everyday challenges that face our sector. We encourage all HR staff within the membership to join the community and contribute in any way possible. This is an informal, social space to share successes within our industry across FE and be kept up to date with the latest HR trends/news.

    For you and your wider team to join, please click here, and ‘request to join’. An admin for the group will authorise your request.

    HR Networks

    The following HR network meetings are arranged for this term:

    Region Date Time Venue
    North East 11 February 10:00 - 11:30 Via MS Teams
    London 12 February 10:00 - 11:30 Via MS Teams
    North West 12 February 14:00 - 15:30 Via MS Teams
    Yorkshire & Humber 13 February 11:00 - 11:30 Via MS Teams
    South West 04 March 10:30 - 12:30 Via MS Teams
    East 11 March 13:00 - 14:30 Via MS Teams
    West Midlands 19 March 10:00 - 11:00 Via MS Teams
    East Midlands 19 March 13:00 - 14:00 Via MS Teams

    AoC contacts

    For further information about anything in this briefing please contact Jo Taylor at jo.taylor@aoc.co.uk or Antony Hines at antony.hines@aoc.co.uk