Employment Bulletin - March 28 2022

Recent changes in employment and immigration law

Ashfords’ Employment Team continues to bring you updates on some of the key employment and immigration developments.

Irreducible Minimum of Obligation and Worker Status

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) has recently held in Nursing and Midwifery Council v Somerville that there is no need to show an irreducible minimum of obligation to offer and accept work for the purposes of establishing “worker” status for the purposes of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (“WTR”).

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Additional bank holiday in 2022: are our employees entitled to an extra day off?

There will be an additional bank holiday in June 2022 to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The bank holiday will fall on Friday 3rd June, after the late May bank holiday which will take place on Thursday 2nd June this year.

Many employers are asking: what does the additional bank holiday mean for our employees? The answer to that question will depend on the employee’s working patters and the wording in their employment contracts.

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Immigration update: priority visa services suspended

The Home Office have confirmed that, as of 12 March 2022, overseas ‘priority’ and ‘super priority’ visa services have been temporarily suspended for all new study, work and family visa applications in order to prioritise processing applications under the Ukraine Family Scheme. The suspension will only apply to applications being made from outside the UK.

This will affect many individuals, as well as UK businesses that have an urgent need to bring employees into the UK from overseas.

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Breaking news: details about the highly anticipated Global Business Mobility, High Potential Individual and Scale-up visa routes are revealed

The Government has issued a Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules, part of which provides more detail on the highly anticipated new visa routes aimed at start-up businesses, scale-up businesses and entrepreneurs.

There will be five routes within the new Global Business Mobility category.

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Going no further than reasonably necessary - the reasonableness of non-compete covenants in shareholder and service agreements

In the recent case of Law by Design Ltd v Ali, the High Court reviewed two post-termination non-compete covenants: one contained within a service agreement (“SA”), and one contained within a shareholders agreement (“SHA”). The Court found that only one of the covenants was enforceable.

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Privacy? What Privacy?

The Court of Appeal has concluded in the recent case of Brake v Guy that an employee cannot reasonably expect a right to privacy or confidentiality when using a company email account in a personal capacity.

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For more information on the articles in this bulletin, please contact either our Employment or Immigration teams.

 

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