We know that our clients would welcome more freedom to manage and care for their staff as they see fit. Often a procedure or assessment seems unnecessary and costs time and money.
The government has just released a document which reports on the first year of application of the ‘one-in one-out’ rule. We thought it would be a good time to have a look at what is being done to de-regulate employment and health and safety.
The Health & Safety Perspective
The impact on health and safety regulation can be summarised as:
- During 2011, began the ‘Red Tape Challenge’ review of 21,000 regulations currently in force (of which approximately 230 relate to health and safety) – a decision is expected toward the end of 2011 on what health and safety regulations will be affected.
- Announced plans to implement the proposals from Lord Young’s review of health and safety. This includes bringing in new risk assessment tools, the registration of health and safety consultants, combined inspection programmes and constraining ‘no win, no fee’ legal services.
- Established an independent review of health and safety legislation following on from the Lord Young Review – this will consider opportunities for reducing the burden of health and safety legislation on UK businesses, while maintaining progress in improving health and safety performance. Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, Chairman of the review team, is due to make his recommendations to Ministers by the end of October 2011.
- Improved guidance to business on compliance with regulations via a number of government websites.
The Employment Law Perspective
The impact on employment law can be summarised as follows:
- The scrapping of specific regulations to prevent cost to business. This includes not extending the right to request time to train to businesses with fewer than 250 employees and not bringing into force ‘dual discrimination’ provisions in the Equality Act.
- The proposal to remove the Equality Act requirements for businesses to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment of their staff by third parties.
- The proposal to increase the qualifying period for employees to be able to bring a claim
- for unfair dismissal from one year’s service to two years’ service.
- Fees for lodging employment tribunal claims will be introduced, although the level of the fee is not yet known.
The Red Tape Challenge
Don’t forget that the government’s ‘red tape challenge’ is still on-going. This enables you to let the government know what you think of the 21,000 regulations currently in force, health and safety and employment law included. The default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go.
If you would like to participate, please click the following link www.redtapechallenge.co.uk
With a number of changes on the cards for both employment law and health and safety, you can rely on Lloyds Law to keep you up to date.
If you have any questions regarding health and safety or employment matters, please do not hesitate to contact your consultant.
CALL LLOYDS LAW ON 0844 7700 656
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