April employment law round-up 

April employment law changes – latest guidance 

A number of important employment law changes took effect in April, as summarised in our recent article. New and revised guidance has now been published to reflect these changes. 

Acas guidance is now available on the new statutory right to take carer’s leave, aimed at employers and employees. It explains who is entitled to take the leave and the process for giving notice, and it includes a summary of an employee’s rights during the leave.  

A revised statutory Code of Practice on requests for flexible working is also now in force, reflecting the changes made to this statutory entitlement from 6 April 2024. Acas has also published separate guidance on statutory flexible working requests. This guidance provides practical examples for employers and employees, the circumstances when a request might be made and the procedure for both parties to follow when making and considering a request.  According to a survey recently conducted by Acas, 43% of employers and 70% of employees were unaware of the changes to the statutory flexible working regime, including the new day one right to make a flexible working request.  

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has updated its guidance for employers on pregnancy and family leave, to reflect the extended redundancy protection and changes to statutory paternity leave and flexible working effective from 6 April 2024.  

Employing disabled people – Back to Work plan 

The Government has published new practical guidance, aimed at line managers, on recruiting, managing and developing disabled people.  

The new Disability Confident guide has been developed by the Department for Work and Pensions in conjunction with the CIPD. It is intended to help managers better support disabled people and covers the entire employment lifecycle, including recruitment, reasonable adjustments, staff retention and career progression, sickness absence and leaving the business or organisation. The guidance follows publication of the CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work report 2023, which found that the knowledge and confidence of managers is the most common challenge experienced by organisations when managing people with a disability or long-term health condition. 

The new guide forms part of the Government’s ‘Back to Work Plan’, launched in November 2023, which has the aim of assisting over one million people with long-term health conditions, disabilities or long-term unemployment to return to work. Recent developments include proposed reforms to the process for issuing ‘fit notes’, with a new call for evidence issued on 19 April 2024, seeking views on the current fit note process and enhancements that would better support people (particularly those with long-term health conditions) to start, stay and succeed in work.  

According to recent NHS data, only 6.2% of fit notes are issued with the statement ‘may be fit for work taking account of the following advice’, meaning that over 10 million fit notes are issued each year without any such advice. The Government believes that this results in a missed opportunity to help people get the appropriate support they may need to remain in work. One of the proposed reforms is to shift responsibility for issuing fit notes from GPs to occupational health specialists. The details of how this proposal would actually work in practice have not yet been published and will presumably be formulated once the call for evidence has concluded on 18 July 2024.  

The Government’s Occupational Health Taskforce, established earlier this year and led by Dame Carol Black, is also expected to introduce a new voluntary occupational health framework in summer 2024. 

In our forthcoming series of Early Bird seminars, we will be looking at the topic of performance management, with a focus on neurodiverse employees and those with mental health conditions, where employers need to approach the issue of performance with particular sensitivity and understanding. Sign up for your free place at your chosen location here. 

Low Pay Commission: latest recommendations and new consultation 

The Low Pay Commission (LPC) has recently published its December 2023 advice to the Government on the future of the national minimum wage (NMW), which followed an earlier consultation. 

The LPC has recommended a reduction in the disparity between the youth NMW rates and the national living wage (NLW), which has widened in recent years. The LPC considers there to be scope for reducing the existing gap between these rates and recommends a further reduction in the age for eligibility to the NLW (which reduced from 23 to 21 from 1 April 2024). It envisages the age of eligibility could be lowered by one year at a time, with the NLW eventually payable to those age 18 and above. 

The Government has separately published its remit to the LPC for recommending the NMW and NLW rates to apply from April 2025. The LPC’s final report will be delivered by the end of October 2024. 

Following publication of the Government’s latest remit, the LPC has now launched a consultation on the impact of recent increases to the NMW and NLW, and likely affordability of suggested future increases. The consultation envisages a future NLW increase from the current rate of £11.44 to somewhere between £11.61 and £12.18 (with a central estimate of £11.89) from April 2025. The consultation closes on 7 June 2024.  

Code of Practice on tipping 

The Government has published a response to its consultation on a draft statutory Code of Practice on tipping, which ran from 15 December 2023 to 22 February 2024. 

The Code is due to be introduced under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, which was granted Royal Assent on 2 May 2023 (see our previous article). The Code will provide guidance to employers and workers in tipping industries on the fair and transparent allocation and distribution of tips in accordance with the Act. Employers must have regard to the Code when designing and implementing their tipping policies and practices. 

Alongside the consultation response is a revised draft Code of Practice, which has been laid before Parliament for final approval. It is expected to come into effect alongside the new rules on tipping from 1 October 2024. Further non-statutory guidance will also be published “in due course”. 

Workers will be entitled to view their employer’s tipping policy and tipping records and will be able to rely on the Code of Practice as evidence in a claim in an employment tribunal. According to government figures, the new rules on the distribution of tips will benefit more than two million workers in tipping industries.