When Ant McPartlin was sentenced for drink driving, a lot of people were asking why he received the penalty that he did.
Well the answer is that the Magistrates follow national Sentencing Guidelines to help a court to decide what penalty a person should face for an offence. There is a “range” of penalties for most types of offences.
Continue reading “The rules on sentencing for drink driving”
What is General Data Protection Regulation?
General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation set up by the European Parliament in order to strengthen the way in which the personal data of individuals living in the European Union is protected when being stored. Personal data is anything that can directly or indirectly identify a person in any format.
At some point, as an employer, you will have to investigate workplace issues – whether these are being dealt with informally or formally through disciplinary procedures. It is important that accurate evidence is obtained to support any decisions made in the process.
Traditionally, a manager would be appointed to investigate the identified issues, usually with support from the HR department. Once the allegations are known, the investigating manager would need to identify what evidence is available. Documentary evidence is one thing, but a lot of the time, if a conduct issue is being investigated the evidence is not written but verbal. It is people’s recollections of events.
Continue reading “Can technology help conduct disciplinary investigations?”
A large portion of the population are working parents, carefully balancing work commitments with childcare responsibilities. A lot of the time this is a very delicate balance, but do you know that you have legal rights as a working parent?
Employment law provisions ensure that working parents have a variety of rights in the workplace. These can start from pregnancy onwards. We all hope that we have a supportive employer who recognises these rights – but this is not always the case and disputes can often arise.
“Each year, there are over 500,000 pregnant women in the workplace, many of whom go on to take a period of maternity leave before returning to work. One in every 20 of these women are made redundant during their pregnancy, maternity leave or on their return, equivalent to 6% of all pregnant women and new mothers at work.”
Continue reading “I’m a working parent, what are my rights?”
In this day and age, the traditional view that following childbirth a woman would stay at home and not return to work has changed.
The majority of businesses and employers need to understand their obligations regarding pregnancy and maternity rights. Furthermore, all working parents including fathers and civil partners as well as mothers, have rights under employment law.
Continue reading “Working Parents – How Should I Manage Them?”
Howells Solicitors have successfully recovered £12,000 for a Barnsley woman who suffered a burn to her leg during an operation at a Sheffield Hospital.
An informal survey of Magistrates Court cases in South Yorkshire found that as many as 70% of police interviews now take place without a solicitor.
Pressure on police workloads means that suspects are often interviewed on a voluntary basis without being arrested, and sometimes interviews take place away from the police station.
For a long time now, the existence of a gender pay gap has been well documented and often commented upon.
It has been common knowledge that there is a sizeable gap between the average pay for men in the UK and the average pay for women. Each year the press identify a gender pay gap day – the day at which women effectively stop earning when compared to men.
It is vitally important that defence teams are pro active in seeking out the unused material in a criminal allegation.
The case of Liam Allan highlights the problems faced by those wrongly accused. At the initial stages the police should be gathering information in an impartial and scrupulous way. The law requires a disclosure officer to be appointed, who must prepare a schedule of all material gathered and analyse all that evidence to see what has to be disclosed to the defence lawyers.
Continue reading “The importance of seeking out unused material in a criminal allegation”
Our recent article ‘maternity discrimination‘, highlighted the shocking statistics about the employment of women who are pregnant or have taken maternity leave.
The campaign group, Maternity Action, have commissioned a report;
Unfair Redundancies During Pregnancy, Maternity Leave And Return To Work – https://www.maternityaction.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/RedundancyReportFinal.compressed.pdflooking specifically into the rate of women who are pregnant or on maternity leave who are made redundant. Continue reading “Get pregnant, lose your job? A time to stand up for change.”