In his latest Coffee Break Briefing webinar, Frettens’ own Insolvency Guru Malcolm Niekirk looked at dealing with solvent liquidations with no tax clearance.
This is the summary of that briefing.
Department of Transport v Sparks
The Court of Appeal had held in this case that an absence management policy in a staff handbook was contractual, the Department of Transport's appeal against an employment tribunal finding.
The case arose from a dispute as to whether certain parts of the employer’s staff handbook were incorporated into employees' contracts. The Claimants (7 in all) had obtained a declaration in the High Court that certain clauses in the staff handbook had contractual effect. The appeal focused on a short-term absence management policy, which, if contractual, restricted managers' scope for taking disciplinary action until specific trigger points had been exceeded, 21 days of short-term absence in any 12-month period.
The Court reviewed the tests for the incorporation of handbook policies into employment contracts. Viewing the employment documents as a whole, the relevant introductory wording of the handbook pointed to a 'distinct flavour of contractual incorporation'. The fact that it might generally be a desirable feature of industrial management to handle absence matters through non-contractual policy would not prevent a particular provision from being 'apt for incorporation'.
Practitioners may wish to note that the Court stated that with the handbook existing only in electronic form, it was far from satisfactory that various versions of it had been irretrievably deleted on updating without retaining previous versions.
In Practice
The employer was not helped in this case by the fact the staff handbook only existed in electronic form. The Court criticised this and also the fact that various versions of the handbook had been irretrievably deleted on updating without retaining previous versions. "We would advise employers to keep at least one copy of old versions of contracts and handbooks to avoid any doubt if a dispute arises in the future," advises Employment Associate Paul Burton.
Our Employment Team, based in Christchurch, also cover Bournemouth, Poole and the New Forest. For a free initial chat, please call 01202 499255 and Paul or a member of the team will be happy to discuss any questions that you may have.
