Five Important Employment Laws in England

Employment law governs the relationship between you and your employees at work, detailing what you should and should not do. Specifically, it details your employees’ rights, such as the right to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). However, UK employment law is a vast area and can change quickly. Also, there are other areas of law within employment law, such as discrimination laws, health and safety laws and data protection laws. Therefore, it can be a minefield for an employer like you to get around. However, it is important to be aware of employment law and essential that you comply with it. Not doing so can result in you facing an employment tribunal or facing civil or criminal penalties. This article will explain five important employment laws in England.

Health and Safety Duties

Health and safety law is a stand-alone area of law. However, it is an area relevant to employment and, therefore, creates duties for employers. As an employer, you have legal responsibilities toward your staff’s health, safety and welfare at work. You are responsible not only for your employees working on your premises but also:

• for clients;
• workers; and 
• the general public.

Health and safety duties involve, for example:

• ensuring you make workers aware of hazards and training them regarding these;
• allowing your workers to participate in identifying, assessing and controlling risks in the workplace; and 
• not punishing your workers where they assert their right to refuse to carry out work which they believe is dangerous

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the government body enforcing health and safety at work and issuing penalties for non-compliance.

Rules About Pay

As an employer, there are rules about paying your staff that you must adhere to. For example, it is a legal requirement for you to pay your staff at least the National Minimum Wage (NMW) where they qualify for it. The current levels are:

You should ensure that you operate a Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system when paying your staff and make the correct tax and National Insurance contributions. It is also a legal requirement that your staff receive a payslip each time they are paid.

Rest Break and Working Hours Requirements

Rules apply regarding rest breaks for your employees both whilst at work and between work shifts. Therefore, as an employer, you should understand these and ensure that you comply with them. For example, your staff should typically:

• not work for more than 48 hours per week unless they opt out of the legal requirement, and this applies as a total over all of their jobs if they have more than one;
• have a rest break of at least 30 minutes for six hours of work, and this should be away from their workstation and not at the end of the six hours;
• have a day off (24 hours) per week; and
• where they are younger workers work a maximum of 40 hours per week and a limit of eight hours per day.

Unlawful Discrimination

It is unlawful to discriminate in employment where the discrimination is concerning one of the nine protected characteristics. These are:

• race;
• religion;
• sex;
• disability;
• sexual orientation;
• pregnancy or maternity;
• age;
• marriage or civil partnership; or
• gender reassignment.

Discrimination can be direct and obvious or indirect. Indirect is where you put a group of people with one of the nine protected characteristics at a disadvantage to others due to the rules you apply. Unlawful discrimination also includes harassment and victimisation.

Holiday Rights

Your staff have a right to time off paid each year as a holiday away from their work. Most full-time employees are entitled to 28 days per year or 5.6 weeks. Where your workers are part-time, they are entitled to a pro-rata of this. Statutory holiday leave can include public holidays at your discretion. 

Workers include:

• agency workers;
• workers working irregular hours; and
• workers working on a zero-hour contract.

However, you can grant your workers more than the statutory minimum holiday entitlement. When doing so, not all the rules that apply to statutory holiday leave will apply to the additional leave entitlement. 

There are some other rights your staff opt-entitled to relating to their statutory holiday leave, which is the right to:

• be paid for their leave;
• build up their leave during other leave such as maternity, paternity and adoption leave;
• build up their holiday leave when off work as sick leave; and 
• request holiday leave while on sick leave.

Key Takeaways

Employment law is a vast area that you as an employer must be aware of. It rapidly changes, so you need to keep abreast of it. This article has outlined five important employment laws you be aware of, such as that there are rules about how much you pay your staff and how you pay them, such as the requirement to give them a payslip. There are also legal rules about health and safety at work, and you should understand that discrimination is unlawful, which requires you to understand, for example, what the nine protected characteristics are.

If you need help understanding employment law in England and Wales, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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