Remove Red Tape

Letting people go

These regulations set out rules and procedures around letting people go, from notice of termination to redundancy payments.

You can find the regulations that relate to letting people go below to the left.

Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:

• Should we scrap them altogether?
• Could their purpose be achieved in a non-regulatory way (eg through a voluntary code?) How?
• Could they be reformed, simplified or merged? How?
• Can we reduce their bureaucracy through better implementation? How?
• Can we make their enforcement less burdensome? How?
• Should they be left as they are?

714 comments on “Letting people go”

1. Stephen Paffett on April 16, 2013 at 1:03 pm said:

   I have had my own business now for almost ten years, I pay my staff well over the going rate and rarely dock them if they have a genuine reason to be late or go for an appointment. If they earn good money why should I then have to contribute further to their pension.

   I find it incredibly objectionable to have to provide a pension for people who are probably better off than I have ever been. It should not be up to me to look after them. I have recently had to cash pensions that I have paid into privatley to keep my business afloat, with vat on profits, paye and corporation tax my business with its four employees contributes over £100000 in tax per annum.

   Surely encouraging and looking after small businesses like mine should be encouraged and looked after. If I had known ten years ago how hard and stressy running your own business was I would never had bothered.

   The old saying all work and no play makes ajck a sad boy could never be truer, successive governments have removed any fun in running a business, the only challenge that faces us is making through the next week without a breakdown.

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2. rachel on March 14, 2013 at 12:31 am said:

   Laws need changing to protect employees as well as employers. I started working for a small business on 10th January after 11 months of searching fora job. I enjoyed the work and my daughter started working for the same employer on weekends. The management were informed by myself during interview that I am a single parent and cannot be as flexible as other members of staff who do not have children yet I was still employed. Within 1 month I was receiving text messages asking me to rush to work and find suitable childcare for my young children with only half hours notice. I bent over backwards for the management and helped to promote business for them but still find myself out of a job and having to sign on because management want to employ friends or family friends. Where are my rights as an employee, I don’t have I don’t have any because I haven’t been employed within the business for at least a year. My daughter also lost her job too and also has no rights as an employee. What example is this setting to our young generation. No wonder this country is in such a state when all it does is protect the people with money and forget about the rest. The laws need changing to give employees rights as well as employers that way people like myself won’t find ourselves unemployed at the drop of a hat and back on benefits which we do not want to be on

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3. Susan Coverdale on March 5, 2013 at 11:29 am said:

   We as owners/directors work over 82 hours a week to make our 16 month old business work and already we have two woman employees going on maternity leave and returning, let’s face it whenever they feel like it, they have all the rights and we have very few. This is not good news for SME enterprises and definitely does not make you want to employ woman of a certain age. And as far as the woman coming back to work and the employer having to be flexible about working hours, what a joke. Why should a salaried employee who is needed/employed to work 40hrs as a manager, have the right on their return to work to request less working hours and be paid the same amount of money, if they can’t do the original job that they were first contracted to do then employers should have the rights/flexibility to be able to offer the person a new contract covering their new employment without being taken to employment tribunal for discrimination etc. Also I think it is very unfair that people on maternity leave continue to accrue holiday pay. This is costing us an extra 28 days wages for every member of staff on maternity leave. They are not working and therefore should not be entitled to paid leave on top of their 12 months off.

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4. Paul Rowan on February 17, 2013 at 12:41 pm said:

   Unfair dismissal & dismissal for some other substantial reason? There is only one reason why government & employers are looking at this legislation to make it easier for them to dispose of workers rights so we are back to the days of tipping the hat to our masters we are a democracy and we should not be falling for tricks such as the government turning people against people when they say look at this we have to look at this because to many people are clogging up our judicial system hard working people THE LOW paid workers of this great country are paying the price for there mistakes they wish to make it easier for there rich friends to cut and slash all worker rights and we all should stand together and defend all our rights that our fellow workers from history have helped us all into making working conditions and pay bargaining to where it is at today we should only be looking further at legislation if it needs to be improved upon not cutting all the flesh away only to leave the bear minimum of the act we would not be fit for purpose what you find if that is allowed to done is more not only youth unemployment unemployment across the board the change that nee to happen is that we need to be looking at the budget cuts as a whole that is not helping struggling local governments who have seen an unprecedented cut in their government grants but need to look services that they can provide and things they have to cease like vital respite care for children and adults library’s sports and recreation services I have seen many of my colleagues leave over the last two years because of what is called as natural wastage and now even more are to leave around 400 -500 hard working and dedicated low paid workers because of central governments unfair allocation of grants to the most deprived areas of the country unless you can guarantee fair justice in the work place there will always be an need for workers to get redress through the proper channels this should not be allowed to go forward as you will see an even more people on the unemployment lines what should happen is the government needs to have a good look at internal procedures and makes sure they are working properly because I believe that people always follow there internal proceedings still only not to get justice which is why they have no other choice but to apply to an employment tribunal the decision by employers to let people go is always taken too easily by not doing what is reasonable or listening to a reasonable defence legislation should only be improved upon not cut to bits to remove the rights of workers the only people that want to see change to this are employers who want to hire and fire as they wish with no real justification.Comment Tags: Paul Rowan

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5. Fiona Stamp on November 7, 2012 at 3:43 pm said:

   I’m aware that I cannot dismiss employees at retirement age, without a disciplinary procedure: this is iniquitous! Should I really “discipline” someone because they have reached age 65? My problem is that as an agency supplying temporary lorry drivers, every single customer has vehicle insurance up to age 65 only. They therefore refuse to accept anyone over 65.

   The other side of the coin is that this is a physically demanding job, and many drivers simply aren’t up to the job by the time they reach 65, but it’s a poor way to repay someone for many years good service by waiting until a serious mistake is made, and then following the disciplinary procedure. There should be a simply, non-contentious method of letting someone retire early without having to wait for them to make a really serious mistake.Comment Tags: retirement and dismissal

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6. Andy V on November 6, 2012 at 2:02 am said:

   Britain can gain a massive competitive advantage by doing away with all employee law, it serves no purpose and we are simply all paying the cost in one way or another.
   Any bureaucracy which a business incurs is an overhead, due to the time and administrative costs that are incurred, from any mechanism be it tribunals paperwork e.t.c. Ultimately these are costs which have to be incurred by the business; which are then either deducted from salaries or increases the cost of the goods and services which it produces, there can be no other way, only people incur costs, there is no business to incur a cost.
   Would it not be better to have no employee regulations, and feel the benefit of having a better salary or lower cost goods and services from making that saving. It is not in any businesses interest to simply fire people as bringing in a new employee requires recruitment cost, a loss of knowledge, needs new training e.t.c. Unfortunately many employment laws such as TUPE are enforced by the EU, better to try opt out of these, and let Britain gain a competitive edge.

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7. William J Read on August 23, 2012 at 7:59 pm said:

   A greater, possibly mandatory, involvement of ACAS at the start of an employment dispute could manage to resolve many disputes before they ever reach a tribunal. Such a process would “weed out” employers who wish to play the system to remove employees for no justified reason, as the mandatory mediation process involving ACAS would mean that there carefully crafted adversarial approach, tailored for the tribunal, would not work.

   It would also be helpful if the employer was forced to attend the ASAS mediation with those directly involved in the dismissal procedure. The present system allows those instigators of a dismissal to avoid appearing in the mediation/tribunal, leaving themselves unchallenged by the employee, or his representatives.

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8. tom on June 17, 2012 at 3:13 am said:

   this is about time, it is long overdue the employment law needs to change, so many people are poorly performing in the job , you tend to find two faced people who behaviour, attitude, personality tend to change after the qualifying period,

   the current system needs to change as their are so many poor staff in the workplace, who basically trot along and do thing that you can’t measure

   education will change if the employments laws change it will allow us to get rid of the old dogs who are sitting on the fence and shying always from work

   there will be improvement in education and social mobility.Comment Tags: employment tribunal, qualifying period, unfair dismissal

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9. tom on June 17, 2012 at 2:58 am said:

   the regulation is hampering progress in the economy,especially in educations

   Hi everyone, I totally agree with the “no fault dismissal” as in my organisation the Oldham college where there are several rubbish teaching staff and a dysfunctional workforce where staff create work place politics.
   As a HR advisor at the organisation we have so many problems from staff abusing the power and poorly teaching and producing poor quality of work. The current system in place allows lousy teaching staff to continue teach after the two year unfair dismissal rule.

   What needs to happen is to allow people to leave after the few weeks with notice of termination of contract, staff change and sit on the fence and trot along and hide. Is after the qualifying periods has gone when staff become lazy, shy away from work, show less interest, make excuses up and play the game.
   At the Oldham College, poor teaching leads to the demotivation of other members of staff as students become dissatisfied and complacence and other teaching staff try to keep the confident of students by empathising with them. However the performance of the lousy, can’t do, negative, teaching drags the whole culture down and lead to poor development of students, the college performance is poor due to poor teaching staff.
   The employment law needs to change the educations system is a sanctuary for incompetence and is leading to failure in the education system. Changes in the employment law will result in performance of college, school, universities rising.
   There are many work place where staff just sit on the fence and trot along education system is one of them where workshy staff coast along. By changing the rules people will think twice and performance will improve of fear of notice of terminations of contract.Comment Tags: education, flexibility of labour, No fault dismissal, outdated, work shy

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10. Mark Ferry on June 11, 2012 at 11:05 am said:

    There should be a two tier approach to resolving employment disputes: Employment Tribunal (lite) run by ACAS with 1 day binding arbitration of cases, with a limit on the amount of evidence that could be presented, no lawyers, no case law and no witnesses apart from the employer and former employee. This would have no deposit requirement, a lower compensation threshold, no right of appeal and the outcome would not be public. Full Tribunals should be subject to mandatory deposits for both sides (there are as many employers as employee who behave unreasonably). The parties could elect which route they wanted to pursue and if only one party wanted to go to a full Tribunal only they would have to pay the deposit. Full Tribunals would therefore tend to atrract the higher value claims and small employers would not be detered from defending claims through the lite route because of expensive legal costs, bad publicity or potentially unlimited awards.Comment Tags: employment tribunal, unfair dismissal

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11. Angelina on June 7, 2012 at 9:44 pm said:

    No fault dismissal is great in theory, as a manager it would make my life easier to remove under-performers. However, the greatest fallacy is this assumes that we are all saints and unfortunately it would be too easy to remove an employee because we don’t like them. Employees become hero to zero with a change of manager – very risky business.

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12. david biesterfield on May 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm said:

    The present law on dismissals & the Industrial Tribunal system is a mess: overcomplicated; biased against the employer & therefore restrictive of economic growth. Those that defend the status quo hide behind the idea that the present system protects the weak & vulnerable whereas, in truth, it tends to protect those who need to be challenged, with the risk of dismissal, because they are under-performing & placing greater strain on their fellow employees who are properly contributing to the team effort. No sensible employer dismisses a good employee. The present system exemplars “the Law of unintended consequences”.

    Any experienced employment lawyer will confirm (privately – they are reluctant, for obvious reasons to do so publicly) that: (1) Most Tribunals are biased in favour of Claimants; (2) Anyone who is dismissed or “storms out” is a fool not to launch a claim for unfair dismissal, or better still discrimination, because, regardless of the merit of the claim, the sheer cost of contesting even the most specious claim means the employer is likely to be willing to pay a substantial sum just to get rid of the matter; & (3) The best advice that the army of “ambulance chasers”, now an endemic part of the employment scene, can give a prospective claimant is, by hook or by crook, to introduce a claim for “discrimination”, thus, at a stroke, winding up the pressure on the employer to pay-out.

    One frustrating illustration of the bias of Tribunals is the disparity in approach that they routinely take to interim applications (whether for adjournments; disclosure of information or other interim steps), as between employer & employee. Whereas a rigid & unbending approach is applied to the former, the opposite is usually applied to the latter.

    Matters could be improved as follows:

    (1) The abuse of “discrimination” claims must be addressed by placing the burden of proof on the person alleging discrimination; capping the monetary value of claims at the same level as the cap on claims for unfair dismissal & issuing guidelines that make clear that an allegation of discrimination is a serious one to make & requires a high standard of proof;

    (2) A failure to follow procedure should not lead to the employer’s virtually automatic loss of a claim against him. At present, many wholly unmeritorious claims succeed on this specious ground, applied with relish by Tribunals against managers who cannot be expected to run quasi courts with legions of advisers, Court Clerks & administrative help – if a fault in procedure would have made no different to the result that would have followed a procedurally correct process, why should a claim that would otherwise have failed succeed simply because of that procedural mistake;

    (3) One solution might be the heavy curtailment of Tribunals, to be largely replaced by a “beefed-up” ACAS whose officers would hear complaints (from & between employers & employees, direct – no lawyers) with a view to resolving them within say no more than 2 weeks & subject to rules aimed at “reconciliation” rather than compensation. Only cases certified as very serious should then be admitted to the Tribunal system with the attendant delay & expense. If this step is considered to be too extreme, as a fait accompli, employers could be given the choice to continue under the present system or to join a self-funding scheme engaging independent arbiters in place of ACAS officers, aimed at the same reconciliatory result & whose certification would, as above, be a pre-requisite to bringing a claim in the Tribunal;

    (4) To curtail the “nothing to lose” abuse that encourages specious claims & “ambulance chasers”, Tribunals should be firmly directed to require claimants with other than the strongest cases to make a small down-payment against the employers costs which should be recoverable in cases where weak claims are pursued unsuccessfully;

    (5) “Ambulance chasers” should be subject to stricter professional standards, requiring openness; co-operation & a duty to pursue & facilitate settlement. Breach of those standards would expose them to liability from those whose time & resources are wasted by abuse of process & “claim stoking”.

    (6) While there is, already, an entitlement to dismiss for “other substantial reason”, that right should be amplified & enhanced.

    Further Comment: (1) Extending the period of continuous employment before which a claim for unfair dismissal can be brought will be of limited benefit if the abuse of “discrimination” is not tackled in tandem; (2) While the reduction of employment “re tape” for small businesses would be beneficial it is perverse to suggest that the same red tape is not also harmful to larger Companies & their employees – the expense & waste of resource inherent in dealing with that red tape applies to them pro rata the size of their workforce.Comment Tags: Current Employment Laws do not “…protect the vulnerable “

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13. Tom Nabielec on May 23, 2012 at 8:49 pm said:

    I use a mix of foreign tech labor and flexible outside suppliers so that i can scale up and scale down my business as need be based on demand. The need to go through a dismissal process rather than simply making a business decision to dismiss is a significant reason not to hire full-time staff. NIC’s, taxes are another. In general it seems the employment law has gotten more onerous every year for years now it seems, e.g. “fire safety” regulations which just seem silly when we are in a concrete studio office similar to a self-storage facility. One of our clients is a company which sells employment law/legal advice and the increasing pace of regulation is a major reason the client has business. SME’s typically sign up for 3 year contracts for over £1300 per year to get help with their employment law issues, so it shows you the costs involved in complying.Comment Tags: Employment Law, letting people go

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14. Peter Hindle on May 23, 2012 at 6:41 am said:

    The three month redundancy consultation rule might work in a large organisation however it is disproportionally destabilising in a small business. The principle of giving sufficient warning could be achieved in 30 days but for a business with less than 50 employees, there should be a simpler process. The notification week, the assessment week, the enactment week. Followed by the notice period.
    For employees who are not suited to their current position, the law makes a company work through a long and negative process to remove them. This very process may protect the current employee but it also reduces the changce of the employer filling the vacancy. This restricts the number of “risks” a small business will take. This in turn reduces latent employment uptake. The time taken to manage a difficult employee could cause loss of focus and damage the business. “No fault terminations” should be allowed in businesses with less than 50 employees.

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15. S Claydon on April 26, 2012 at 12:34 pm said:

    An employer contracts an individual to do a job, the individual legally agrees to the job in the contract. This is the starting point. Both now have legal responsibilities to the other. If one of the parties can no longer fulfil the contract then the law must allow for the parties to separate in a fair and dignified manner. If an employer finds that the employee can no longer do the job for whatever reason and they can show they have worked with them to improve the situation, sought alternatives and taken external advice and guidance to ensure compliance with the Equality bill etc then they should be able to finish the contract and provide severance pay. If the employee wants to resign then they should be legally bound to fulfil the notification period and a company must be able to legally reclaim an losses incurred by a sudden departure not in line with the legal agreement. It’s about both sides moving from ‘I am entitled’ to ‘I am responsible’. Unfair dismissal claims must not be submitted to a tribunal until the employee has completed a formal grievance if leaving under duress and tries to claim constructive dismissal. Employers must investigate and give clear evidence to a dismissal and the decision be based on the balance of probabilities. The law needs to protect all sides, commerce needs to thrive and the individuals who act inappropriately accountable for their individual actions. Only be holding an individual accountable will change the way people behave. An employment contract has a psychological side and either party should have the right to decide the relationship has run its course and a remedy identified, if its termination, then both sides should have equal rights to address the issues and if no resolution can be agreed the relationship be ended, with pay or in gross misconduct cases, no pay.Comment Tags: unfair dismissal

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16. Julian Kirkness on April 10, 2012 at 3:50 pm said:

    The difficulty in laying of staff who are either no longer required or, worse, not performing well are a huge hindrance to businesses expending their workforces. As an employer you simply feel too frightened to tackle many of the issues that would be better resolved.

    I had a particular situation in which an employee of 6 years standing had many disciplinaries over the years and was under final written warning when he walked out saying “tell Julian (me) good by I’m leaving”. We took this reasonably to be a resignation but even under these circumstances our Solicitor recommended we settle (pay) with him because he feared we might lose a tribunal.

    PLEASE do something about this!!Comment Tags: employment

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17. Kai Chung on April 9, 2012 at 2:47 pm said:

    On an issue directly related to redundancy etc, I note the Unemployment Benefits have been Taxable since the 1980′s – this seems unfair to tax someone who was made redundant through no fault of his/her own. Taxing Unemployment Benefit is also very expensive to administer, as the question to ask is, why is the state spending a Tenner in Collecting a Pound off an umemployed persion in receipt of benefit, and operating at a Loss of Nine Pounds for every pound collected (if at all)??? – Does not seem to make sense from my end. Remember this includes the costs incurred in running and maintaining an appeals service network across the UK, including Office Costs and administrative costs, which tend to escalate during economic recessions.Comment Tags: Redundancy, Tax, Unemployment Benefit

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18. Dominic Bascombe on March 26, 2012 at 11:19 am said:

    The qualifying period for unfair dismissal should be shortened, not extended to 2 years. People need to know that they have some protection from being unfairly treated by unscrupulous employers. And those employers who treat their staff well have nothing to worry about. Asking for fees to be paid before a claim can be hear at an employment tribunal is completely wrong and against the concept of fair access for all.Comment Tags: employment tribunal, qualifying period, unfair dismissal

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19. Andrew Wood on March 25, 2012 at 7:49 am said:

    All employment laws should be abolished. They (and trade unions) are a millstone round the neck of economic progress. They dont have such red tape in the US and hence its far easier to start a business there as recently highlighted by Googles CEO.

    People seem to think they have a God given right to a job. They don’t. As an employer, if they dont want to employ you anymore for whatever reason they dont have to -its their money they’re paying you.

    Likewise if the terms of the job change and you dont like them, go and get a job elsewhere.

    All this crap about ACAS, unfair dismissal, strikes etc is holding the UK back. Scrap all employment laws and make trade unions illegal.

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