You, Martin Pratt
& Ince, in any case

29-12-2020 /

For the second time in four years, a Conservative Government has begun consultation on ways to reform post-termination restrictions in employment contracts. I would urge anyone with an interest and experience to respond to the Government directly before the 26 February 2021 deadline.

24-11-2020 /

On 5 November the FCA banned three men convicted of sexual and (in one case) domestic violence offenses from working in the financial services sector ever again.

25-09-2020 /

To protect the UK economy over winter, which he says will be a “difficult" one, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, confirmed the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme yesterday.

08-06-2020 /

It’s sadly inevitable that as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme begins to wind down, and employers across the UK emerge to a shrunken economy, but with pre-coronavirus wage bills, that redundancies on a significant scale are going to happen across the nation.

02-04-2020 / Maritime

The team at Ince recently contributed to the UK chapter of the Chambers And Partners Shipping Guide 2020, which has now been published.

15-10-2019 /

This article was first published by LexisNexis on 11 October 2019 The cross-party think-tank the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has called for corporate governance laws to be tightened to increase pressure on bosses to help workers increase their pay over time. This call was set out in the think-tank’s second research paper on the subject of pay progression for low-paid workers, which covers the role of corporate decision-making. The authors of the report outline numerous policy recommendations, including new duties for directors and the tailoring of pay expectations for different sectors. Martin Pratt, partner at Ince, contends that, if implemented, the SMF’s proposals could create a conflict of interest for directors between their duties to company shareholders and employees.

13-06-2018 /

Heating engineer Gary Smith worked for Pimlico Plumbers (‘PP’). He worked solely for PP, had to wear a PP uniform while on duty, his van (which contained a GPS tracker for PP’s benefit) was heavily branded with PP’s livery and he was required to work a 40 hour week. His contract described his payment as “wages” and contained provisions for dealing with “gross misconduct”. However, his contract also described him as an independent contractor, he was registered for VAT, and he did not pay PAYE income tax. So was he an employee, or something else?

15-11-2017 /

We are less than nine months away from one of the biggest compliance hurdles human resources teams have faced in living memory the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) This new law will represent the biggest shift in data protection law since the advent of the Data Protection Act 1998 and, although many of the concepts and procedures remain the same or very similar to the old law, the regulatory burden and penalties for getting it wrong will grow enormously

20-04-2016 /

The “Posted Workers Directive” is an obscure bit of law. It provides that when an employee is sent by his employer from one EU country to another on a temporary basis, to work on a construction contract for example, then for that period the employee enjoys many of the statutory employment rights of the country he is posted to.

14-01-2016 /

The headlines in today’s papers have been dominated by what’s being reported as a “new” right given to employers by the European Court of Human Rights – to “snoop” on private emails and messages at work. In fact the new decision doesn’t change much, if anything, in the UK at all.

17-08-2015 /

It comes as no surprise that, in England, Uber is facing litigation seeking to establish that its drivers are workers, not contractors or, as the company puts it, “partners.” Uber lost a similar action in its home state of California, where the company failed to stop at least one of its drivers being regarded as an employee under state law. That ruling may open floodgates, prompting fears of a massive class action suit in the US.

27-05-2014 /

It is hard to ignore the issue of racism in football. The issue has, over the last two years, rarely been off the back pages of our newspapers. The now infamous game between QPR and Chelsea in October 2011 led to the prosecution of the national team captain on charges of racial abuse, which were dismissed in a magistrates’ court but indirectly caused the resignation of the England national coach.

10-12-2013 /

A survey earlier this year by the US global information security firm Symantec suggested that a staggering 70 of former employees surveyed in the US, UK, France, Brazil, China and Korea who had recently left their jobs, would consider taking confidential data with them, and 62 saw nothing wrong in this practice