Freeze on hiring staff
According to a survey of 1,000 small businesses by the accountancy software powerhouse sage, nearly 80% of small businesses will not be hiring staff this year. The research also confirms again that it’s graduates who are suffering most. Employers do need to be wary of age discrimination. Most employers think of this as applying to not hiring older staff but it can equally apply to younger people. Employers should also remember that a discrimination case can be brought notwithstanding no job offer is made. In other words, be careful in the whole recruitment process.
Posted June 26th, 2011 in Uncategorized |
Reverse inequality
There is rightly a lot of research and comment on the fact that in many jobs women undertaking a similar or same role as men are still paid less. However, as with all things in life, there are exceptions and in a somewhat surprising answer to a prescient Freedom of Information request. It transpires, somewhat embarrassingly for the Government, that at the Equality Office women are being paid nearly 8% more. The discrepancy may at least be partially explained by the relatively small number of people in the team concerned at just over 100 and the fact that in that team some 2/3 of staff are female.
In overall terms, research suggests that nationally men get paid just over 10% more than women. This seems to be reducing year on year at present, showing that employers are becoming more aware of their equal pay legal obligations.
Posted June 15th, 2011 in Uncategorized |
Sometimes, legal documents contain errors. In some areas of law (although with business to business contracts the courts are more reluctant) the court will reinterpret the contract if there is inherent inequality in bargaining positions, such as with employment contracts, or where it is clear the parties have not included necessary aspects to make the contract workable.
In a recent case, a farmer sought to avoid an estate rentcharge for roads and sewers on the farm estate when
the covenants in the land transfer documents contained errors and omissions.
Concluding that the rentcharge was not intended to yield a profit but merely to allocate the costs to the occupier of the land, the court ruled that the documents had to be construed to give effect to the ‘missing covenant’.
The decision was also influenced by case law which provides that a person who takes the benefit of a deed cannot avoid a burden which attaches to it.
Posted May 26th, 2011 in Commercial Litigation |
Charity Trustees have been reminded of the need to be aware of the possibility that their charity may be used for financial crime, with the National Fraud Authority estimating that annual losses to charities due to financial crime amount to more than 2 per cent of total income.
As the Charity Commission points out, ‘trustees have a legal duty and responsibility under charity law to protect the funds and other property of their charity so that it can be applied for its intended beneficiaries. They must also comply with the general law (and overseas law where applicable) including in relation to the prevention of fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing.’
The Charity Commission has therefore prepared a list of ‘ten top tips’ for charity trustees to ensure they are aware of the possibility and take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of financial crime.
These are as follows.
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Review your financial controls at appropriate intervals and do so critically, keeping them up to date. Just because you have not been a victim of fraud, do not assume that it will never happen;
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Segregate duties – do not allow one or two people to be in charge of all aspects of your charity’s financial controls without any checks being made;
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Make sure all of the separate parts of the financial records agree with each other. Always ask for and keep receipts. Reconciling bank statements with invoices, receipts, purchase and payment authorisations will often help to identify fraud at an early stage, and may discourage potential fraudsters;
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Never weaken your financial security for the sake of short cutting or time saving. For example, do not pre-sign blank cheques, even if a second signature is required. Doing so reduces your cheque security by 50 per cent –or, to put it another way, doubles the risk;
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Keep lists or registers of valuable fixed assets and key charity property, and periodically inspect them;
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Ensure that electronic or online banking arrangements are secure and are protected with dual-level authorisation;
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When recruiting staff – especially those who handle the charity’s finances – make appropriate background checks and take up references;
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If your charity makes grants to beneficiaries or other organisations, carry out appropriate due diligence checks on applicants. Guidance on this can be found at ‘know your beneficiaries’;
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Ensure that as trustees you receive and consider regular reporting information about the charity’s finances. If you are a trustee or manager, make sure that you understand the financial summaries and reports that are presented to you, and if you do not, ASK for an explanation that you CAN understand; and
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If you suspect or become aware of fraud, make sure that you know what to do and who to inform. Make sure it is part of the culture of your charity. Prompt and appropriate action will help to protect your charity and limit any financial damage.
If you have concerns about how a charity of which you are the trustee is being run, contact us for advice.
Posted May 24th, 2011 in General |
The High Court has confirmed that a trade mark refers to the general impression given by the mark, not to the details of the mark and this can include auditory and conceptual factors as well as purely visual ones.
The important issue is whether the average consumer would be misled bearing in mind that the mark is perceived as a whole, not by its individual parts.
Merely creating a mark that is subtly different from a trade mark may well be insufficient to prevent an action for violation of the trade mark or ‘passing off’ (deriving an economic benefit from it) if the overall impression is similar. For advice on all trade mark and other intellectual property matters, contact us.
Posted May 23rd, 2011 in Commercial Litigation |
The Financial Services Ombudsman has refused to refer a test case involving a travel insurance claim to the court in order to determine whether the volcanic ash cloud which caused so much disruption to European aviation in 2010 was not covered by the phrase ‘poor weather conditions’.
Most travel insurance policies contain limitations in cover which exclude or limit claims resulting from ‘acts of God and those relating to areas where there is civil unrest or war or to which travel is undertaken when the Foreign Office has advised against it. Normally, they allow a claim to be made where it results from adverse weather conditions.
The case involved a woman whose claim was refused by the insurer, which argued that it was not covered by the clause that allowed a claim to be made when the travel disruption resulted from adverse weather conditions. She appealed to the Ombudsman.
The ombudsman concluded that it was not a suitable case to refer to the court as a test case and made an award to the claimant.
Posted May 20th, 2011 in Civil Litigation, General |
When a family is being housed, the provision of separate, self-cont
ained flats with no common living areas does not mean that accommodation had been made available such that the members of the applicant’s family could ‘reside together’ in the ordinary meaning of the phrase.
Posted May 19th, 2011 in General |
Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd., which became the first company to be convicted of corporate manslaughter (under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007) in February of this year, has lost an appeal against its conviction.
The company was convicted following the 2008 death of geologist, Alexander Wright, 27, who died when a trench he was working in collapsed.
Posted May 19th, 2011 in General |
Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), which was sold aggressively by many of the clearing banks during the debt boom
of the 1980s and 1990s, has led to large provisions being made for losses as the banks have abandoned attempts to fight mis-selling claims.
Thousands of customers w ere sold PPI policies, which undertook to cover loan repayments on lo an in the event that the borrower became unemployed or fell ill and was unable to make the repayments. The policies were extremely profitable for the banks because the claim rates were very low and the policy costs were high.
However, following widespread complaints and successful litigation, the banks have abandoned their struggle and have earmarked more than £5 billion to meet claims.
Posted May 19th, 2011 in Civil Litigation, General |
Keeping company records up to date is not always a top priority for the directors of smaller companies. However, failing to keep the shareholders’ register up to date can have a downside if a share transfer has occurred but the new owner’s name is not entered into the register of members.
The problem is that under the Companies Act 2006, except in very limited circumstances, the person shown as a member in the register of members is a member and a person not shown isn’t – until the register is rectified.
This can have practical effects such as making notices of meetings invalid, invalidating votes of shareholders and so on and can affect, as it did in a recent case in the Supreme Court, whether or not one retains the rights attaching to shares transferred for financial purposes into the names of nominees.
Contact us for advice on company secretarial and company law matters.
Posted May 17th, 2011 in General |