The small to medium-sized enterprise market increasingly demands certainty of its suppliers, with fixed-fee agreements at the top of the list. We can offer you a comprehensive range of company and commercial law services and once we’ve scoped out your requirements during our initial consultation, we are happy to complete them for the fixed fees set out below.

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Please note, in the event your requirements change during the course of the work, due to increased complexity, size or third party involvement, we will need to charge an additional fee. This will always be pre-agreed with you prior to starting any further work.

If you need more information about how our small business fixed-fee service can you give peace of mind with your company and commercial law needs, please contact Nick Fieldhouse for a no-obligation preliminary consultation.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court in the case involving the retirement of a law firm partner at the age of 65 appears to have been seen in some quarters as helping employers to revert to the use of a compulsory retirement age. Employers who feel reassured that compulsory retirement has suddenly become a feasible option again are likely to be mistaken.

The law firm in this case had relied on three factors to justify compulsory retirement at 65 – retaining associate lawyers through being able to offer the prospect of partnership, facilitating workforce planning by creating realistic expectations as to when partnership vacancies would arise and creating a supportive culture which avoided or limited the expulsion of partners on performance grounds. The Court stressed that in order for business aims to be legitimate (as these were), they had to be objectives of a public policy nature and consistent with the social policy aims of the state. Such public policy aims could include inter-generational fairness and the preservation of dignity (which would include avoiding the dismissal of older workers on grounds of underperformance). If the firm’s aims had been principally to reduce costs or to improve competitiveness, they would not have had the required public policy character.

In the light of the Court’s ruling the case was sent back to the Employment Tribunal for it to consider whether the choice of 65 as the retirement age was a proportionate means of achieving the firm’s objectives. The Tribunal will have to consider this in the light of the circumstances that existed in 2006 when the retirement in this case took place: the fact that at that time 65 was the statutory compulsory retirement age which applied to employees will be a relevant factor. Justifying the choice of 65 by reference to the present circumstances would probably be much more difficult.

This case therefore is still some way from being concluded. Many employers will not share the characteristics of this law firm, in particular the tendency of members of the firm to remain in it for most of their working lives. An employer who, for example, attempts to rely solely on an objective linked to the preservation of dignity for older workers to try to justify compulsory retirement at a specified age is likely to have some major hurdles to overcome.

Claims continue to arise from the ways in which employers handle redundancies. One recent case involved a situation in which the employee affected by the proposed redundancy was genuinely in a unique role, in that he had been appointed to a position in China after having worked in the UK for some time. The dispute concerned whether the employer was under any obligation to consider UK based employees alongside the employee based in China, with a possible view to making a position available for the China-based employee by dismissing someone based in the UK, i.e. “bumping”. The employer did in fact offer a vacant part time UK-based position to the employee but he rejected this as being unsuitable and was dismissed.

The EAT agreed with the Tribunal that the dismissal was fair. As long as the employer has genuinely applied its mind to the composition of the pool (in this case a pool of one) and its decision is a logical one, the principle is that the Tribunal or the EAT should not normally interfere with the employer’s decision. There were no special factors in this case which required the employer to resort to “bumping”.

In another case an employee affected by a restructuring process challenged the employer’s decision not to appoint him to a newly created position which in the employee’s view strongly resembled his original job. The employee and another internal candidate were interviewed for it but in the end the employer appointed an external person and the employee was dismissed. In the interview process the employer used ten competencies which it normally used in its annual assessment process, some of which were subjective in nature. Overturning the Tribunal’s decision, the EAT ruled that the dismissal was fair. Although objective criteria should be applied to the members of a pool when selecting employees for redundancy, there is no obligation on an employer to rely solely on objective criteria when considering an employee for appointment to an alternative role. The EAT accepted that, as in any interview process, it is legitimate for subjective factors to play some part in the appointment process.

Under the various employment law changes that took effect on 6 April 2012, the qualifying period required to bring a claim of unfair dismissal or request a written statement of reasons for dismissal is increased to two years. The increased period applies only to those who start a new job on or after 6 April 2012.

It may be tempting to think that no useful purpose is served by setting out the reasons for dismissal in writing where the employee has only had a short period of employment. A recent case involving an employee who was dismissed after less than four months’ employment illustrated what a serious mistake this can be.

In a letter sent to the employee immediately after she was dismissed, the employer said “I am sorry it had to come to this and that – possibly quite understandably – you hold me in such poor regard”.

The letter told the employee what pay in lieu of notice she would receive and what arrangements were to be made for the collection of company property – and that was all. The employee claimed that the dismissal itself and certain events leading up to it constituted direct discrimination on grounds of sex. The employer tried to argue that the employee’s performance had been unsatisfactory in several respects and that this was the sole reason for dismissal.

One of several difficulties for the employer was that the letter confirming dismissal made no reference to unsatisfactory performance. A letter outlining allegations of sex discrimination was sent to the employer some 4 weeks after the dismissal. The employer’s reply to that letter, sent about one month later, was the first occasion on which allegations of poor performance were made.

In the two key incidents which immediately preceded the dismissal the employer, by email, had called upon the employee to apologise to two male colleagues without attempting to ask the employee for her account of what had occurred before deciding who, if anyone, was at fault. The second of the requests for an apology was expressed in particularly offensive and upsetting terms. The employee argued that these requests and the dismissal (which arose directly out of the employee’s reaction to the second request for an apology) were acts of sex discrimination. The Tribunal agreed. It rejected the employer’s claim that the employee’s alleged unsatisfactory performance was the reason for the treatment that she received and for the dismissal.

The employee was awarded compensation of over £26,000, including £15,000 for injury to feelings. It was never going to be easy for the employer to explain away or excuse its conduct in unjustifiably calling upon the employee to apologise to the two male employees. The employer, however, might have had some prospect of defeating the claim that the dismissal was an act of sex discrimination if it had set out the relevant facts and its reasons in the dismissal letter. The employer had only itself to blame for this very expensive exit bill from this employee.

Fieldhouse & Co are excited to announce we have moved to Reigate, as well as retaining a presence in our Redhill office. We can now cover the whole community and look forward to welcoming our clients at our new office.

Please make a note of this new address:

Oakdene House
34 Bell Street
Reigate
Surrey RH2 7SL

For a map of our new location, please see our Contact Us Page.