Solicitors Sheffield

A maintenance operative who carried on working after suffering a fall was found to have ruptured a tendon in his knee after seeing his doctor the next day.

 

The 45 year-old man was carrying equipment down steps attached to scaffolding when he lost his balance. One of the steps had not been properly secured and, as he stepped on it, it tilted forwards causing him to fall heavily onto his left knee.

 

After surgery to reconstruct his tendon, a wire was inserted into his knee to support it while it healed. Four months later, he had a further operation to have the wire removed and then began a course of physiotherapy. In total, he was unable to work for eight months while he recovered, resulting in a substantial loss of earnings. Although he has now returned to work, he has been told that he will never fully recover from the injuries he suffered.

 The man commenced a personal injury claim against his employer. The employer’s insurance company admitted liability for the accident and the claim was settled for £44,000.

15,000 Britons with bank accounts in Belgium will have their details opened up to HM Revenue and Customs by 1 July according to an announcement made today.

 

The move is the latest in a series of agreements between fiscal authorities in Europe to trade information on bank accounts held by non-nationals.

 

Also released today was the news that the Spanish tax authorities are to investigate the UK chief of Santander, Ana Botin, for tax evasion relating to monies held in Swiss bank accounts.

 

Such housing as is available in the countryside is often bought as holiday or weekend homes by people from outside the area, keeping the cost of housing unaffordable for those employed locally and, in some cases, causing the creation of ‘ghost villages’; which are virtually deserted a lot of the time, especially on weekdays in the winter. The effect on the local retail economy can also be devastating.

 

In a bid to combat these issues, the Government has suggested that councils in rural areas consider changing their planning policies to allow unused farm buildings to be converted to use for residential purposes, rather than insisting that they only be used as farm buildings.

This idea is part of the 'Home on the Farm' scheme, the aim of which is to turn unused farm buildings into affordable housing. It is hoped that young families will thereby be able to remain in their local communities, rather than having to move to cities to find housing.

The Government hopes to adopt the scheme nationally. It has been outlined in the Government's response to the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee's report into farming in England's upland areas.

 

The discovery has led HRMC to increase their estimate of the potential tax yield to ‘billions of pounds’. The information has been obtained through a series of information-sharing agreements between HMRC and foreign tax authorities and includes information from banks and ‘whistleblowers’.

 

HMRC offered a series of amnesties for taxpayers to ‘come clean’ about such accounts in exchange for beneficial treatment by tax inspectors, but it would appear that their entreaties have been largely ignored.

 

Recently, a whistleblower based in Geneva gave HMRC the names of 7,000 UK customers who collectively hold some £13 billion in accounts in Switzerland.

 

The information received to date has led to many raids by HMRC officers and eight arrests.

 

A specialist unit is being set up by HMRC to investigate those with undeclared offshore assets and those who seem to have lifestyles which cannot be financed by their disclosed income.

We recently ran a news item dealing with the successful prosecution of firms running bogus ‘prize draws’ which promised prizes to people. The catch being that the procedure which had to be followed in order to claim a ‘prize’ cost several pounds.

 

The prizes allocated to most ‘winners’ were of far less value than the payments made to the organisers and the scheme was designed to yield a good profit for them. The Office of Fair Trading successfully prosecuted the organisers and it was hoped that this would be the end of this type of scam.

 

Regrettably, the scam is back, offering prizes as before, but with a subtle twist. Now, the procedure requires you to apply for a ‘claim number’ (to see if you qualify for a prize) at a cost of at least £9.

 

The scheme is clearly designed to run at a profit for the organisers and is based at a very similar address to that of the companies prosecuted earlier in the year.

 

The OFT have been informed. If you have relatives who might be inclined to enter such prize draws, it is worth having a word of warning with them.

 

 

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the police were obliged to destroy such data taken from a person who was cleared with regard to an offence.

 

Following a change in the law in 2001, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) had issued guidelines to police forces in England and Wales stating that data should be destroyed ‘only in exceptional cases’.

 

However, the Court ruled that the guidelines were unlawful because they did not comply with European human rights law.

 

New guidance will have to be issued to Police Forces and the Government proposes to initiate new laws regarding the retention of DNA samples and fingerprints similar to those used in Scotland, which only allow the retention of samples for a limited period and with regard to a  certain types of crime.

Three former directors of software company Torex will face criminal charges brought by the Serious Fraud Office. The company’s former chairman, accountant and legal director will have to answer to charges of conspiracy to defraud.

 

In January, two other former directors of the company were convicted of the same offence after the company had reported more than £1.6 million in fictitious profits in the company’s accounts for 2005 and 2006. The two were jailed in February, disqualified from acting as company directors and ordered to make contributions to the costs of their prosecutions.

 

The fraud came to light when the (then) chief executive discovered it and acted as ‘whistle blower’.

 

 

Under the proposals, mothers would be entitled to 18 weeks’ maternity leave and pay, taken in one continuous block, around the time of their child’s birth. Once the early weeks of maternity and paternity leave have ended, parents would be able to share 30 weeks of additional parental leave, of which 17 weeks would be paid. Unlike the current system, this leave could be divided into blocks between the parents, with both parents able to take leave at the same time should they wish. Employers would have the ability to ensure that the leave is taken in one continuous period if agreement cannot be reached. They would also be able to ask staff to return for short periods to meet peaks in demand or to require that leave be taken in one continuous block, depending on business needs. In addition, there would be four weeks of parental leave and pay available to each parent, to be taken in the child’s first year, and the father’s current right to take 2 weeks’ paid paternity leave around the time of the baby’s birth would be retained.

 

Business Secretary Vince Cable said, “These measures are fairer for fathers and maintain the existing entitlements for mothers – but crucially give parents much greater choice over how to balance their work and family commitments.”

 

Flexible Working

The consultation also proposes extending the right to request flexible working to all workers who have been with their employer for 26 weeks. To achieve this, the system for considering flexible working requests would be made more adaptable, with the statutory process replaced with a new duty on employers simply to consider requests ‘reasonably’. A statutory Code of Practice would be published, setting out best practice on the benefits and adoption of flexible working, including guidance on what is a ‘reasonable’ process for handling requests. It is proposed that employers should be allowed to take into account employees’ individual circumstances when considering conflicting requests. There are no plans to alter the current 8 business reasons for a business to turn down a request.

 

Equal Pay

It is proposed that where an Employment Tribunal finds that an employer has discriminated on the ground of gender in relation to pay, it will have the power to order the employer to conduct a pay audit and publish the results.

 

The Working Time Regulations

Amendments to the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR) are also planned, including a tidying up exercise, to bring the WTR into line with recent judgments in the European Courts, so that annual leave entitlements can be rescheduled, and carried over to the next leave year, when a worker falls ill during planned annual leave. The proposal is to limit this to the four weeks’ minimum annual leave entitlement under the EC Working Time Directive.

 

The consultation document can be found here. The consultation closes on 8 August 2011.

A blitz by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) has led to fifteen South West businesses being fined more than £100,000 when 28 illegal workers were found.

The fines followed 114 raids in Devon and Cornwall made by UKBA in 2010, which uncovered more than 100 offenders. Fines totalling more than £750,000 were levied.

 

259 illegal workers were deported from Devon and Cornwall in 2010.

 The scale of the fines being levied following prosecutions initiated by UKBA should sound a strong warning note for employers who may be tempted to ignore immigration laws when offering employment.

 

For advice on your obligations as an employer of foreign nationals, contact us.

Increasing numbers of people are spending substantial periods of time away from their homes on account of working away, having a second home or for any of a number of other reasons. Houses can also frequently be empty for substantial periods after the death of the owner or prior to sale. If you are the owner of, or are responsible for, a property that is likely to be unoccupied for a considerable period it is worth checking your house insurance policy. Many policies contain clauses which invalidate the cover if the property is unoccupied for more than a minimum period – often 30 days, a period which would be exceeded by some holiday cruises.

 

Normally, the insurer will agree to extend cover when requested, although this might involve the payment of an additional premium or compliance with specific requests, such as turning the water off at the main. An alternative might be for the insurer to reduce the level of cover or increase the excess payable for certain types of claim during the period of absence. Also, substantial additional premiums are often required for household contents policies where there will be an extended void period. In some cases, it might be cheaper to put all or some of the household contents into secure storage.

 

There are insurers who specialise in providing cover for unoccupied homes and second homes.