Category: Employment Law

The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025. The result of this is a number of changes to legislation being implemented over the next two years.

The next scheduled changes take effect in April 2026, each of which are detailed below.

Paternity leave and ordinary parental leave – date of changes 6 April 2026

• Paternity Leave:

Currently, employees need 26 weeks’ continuous service by the end of the 15^th week before the expected birth week to qualify for paternity leave. This will become a day 1 right, allowing employees, who have a baby due, on or after 5 April 2026, to give notice of their intention to take Paternity Leave from the first day of employment.

New starters will, therefore, get the same two weeks’ paternity leave entitlement as everyone else although it is important to note that qualifying criteria for statutory paternity pay, however, remains in place. This brings paternity leave in line with maternity leave, which is already a day one right. As a result new employees can take paternity leave, but unless your Company policy says otherwise, the leave would be unpaid, until they meet the set criteria to be entitled to pay.

The requirement to provide you with the relevant notice to take such leave has also not changed as employees still need to give notice of entitlement by the 15^th week before the expected week of birth (in essence giving 15 weeks’ notice), then confirm their choice of specific dates 28 days in advance. There is a temporary exception to this which is detailed below:

On 18 February 2026, a temporary reduced notice period was introduced. Fathers and birth partners can give 28 days’ notice, instead of 15 weeks. This is only for parents who will become newly eligible because of the law change as it allows them to take paternity leave from the first day of the new law.

The temporary 28-day notice period applies if:

• the employee will become eligible for paternity leave on 6 April 2026 because of the change in the law
• the expected due date is between 5 April and 25 July 2026

If the due date is 26 July 2026 or later, the usual 15-week notice period will apply.

• Paternity Leave:

The restriction on taking paternity leave after shared parental leave will be removed. Therefore, employees will be able to take a period of paternity leave, after any period of Shared Parental Leave should they wish to.

• Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave:

An eligible employee will be entitled to take up to 52 weeks’ unpaid Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave (BPPL) to care for a child where the child’s primary carer has died within 52 weeks of the child’s birth or placement for adoption. The right to take BPPL applies where the primary carer dies on or after 6 April 2026 and is intended to support continuity of care for children in highly distressing circumstances.

BPPL must generally start and end within the same 52-week period following the child’s birth or placement. There is a limited exception to this where the bereavement occurs less than 14 days before the end of that period. In those circumstances, the employee may take up to 14 days’ BPPL.

The eligibility criteria have been set deliberately wide. An employee will be eligible where they:

• are the father of a child whose mother has died; or
• were the spouse, civil partner or partner of the child’s deceased primary carer;
• have, or are expected to have, the main responsibility for the upbringing of the child; and
• are taking leave to care for the child.

Notice requirements

Naturally, bereavement can be a difficult area to navigate, and the legislation adopts a pragmatic approach to the notice the employee must give.

Where BPPL begins within eight weeks of the bereavement, the employee may give notice verbally and on short timescales. Within that eight-week period, they must then confirm in writing how much BPPL they plan to take and their intended return date.

If the employee wishes to take BPPL more than eight weeks after the bereavement, they must give at least one week’s written notice. They may vary or cancel BPPL and amend their intended return date, subject to minimum notice requirements.

Flexibility in these circumstances is helpful, but it will be imperative that internal guidance is clear and manager handling is consistent.

Employees taking BPPL will benefit from protections broadly aligned with those for employees taking other forms of family leave, including:

• continuation of contractual terms and conditions (excluding pay);
• the right to return to the same role, or a suitable alternative depending on the length of the leave;
• protection from suffering a detriment and automatic unfair dismissal protection where dismissal is connected to taking, or seeking to take, BPPL;
• Where BPPL lasts six weeks or more, enhanced redundancy protection will apply for up to 18 months after the child’s birth or placement. This aligns BPPL with recent reforms extending family leave redundancy protection.

Employees may work up to ten “keeping in touch” days during leave, by agreement, without bringing the leave to an end.

• Parental Leave:

Currently employees must have worked for their employer for one year to be eligible for Parental Leave, this will become a day one right.

Sick pay – date of changes 6 April 2026

The following will apply effective from 6 April 2026:

• Statutory sick pay (SSP) will be paid from the first day of illness, instead of the fourth day.
• Currently, workers must earn a minimum amount to be eligible for statutory sick pay, this lower earnings limit will be removed. Therefore, all employees, regardless of how little they earn, will be entitled to SSP.
• Payment will be 80% of an employee’s average weekly earnings or in line with SSP £123.25 whichever is lower.

What if an employee was sick prior to 6 April 2026?

An employee who was on sick leave but was not entitled to SSP:

If an employee started their sickness absence before 6 April 2026 but was not entitled to SSP because they earned below the lower earnings limit, they may be entitled to SSP from 6 April 2026.

An employee will be entitled to SSP from 6 April 2026 if their sickness absence started on or:

• after 22 September 2025; or
• before 21 September 2025, but they had periods where they returned to work between 22 September 2025 and 5 April 2026

For these employees, you should calculate their average weekly earnings based on the period before their sickness started, they are entitled to this weekly rate for SSP for up to 28 weeks.

An employee will not be entitled to SSP from 6 April 2026 if their sickness absence started on or before 21 September 2025 and continued without a break until 5 April 2026. This also applies to any linked sickness absence that continues on or after 6 April 2026. They will only become entitled to SSP again once they have returned to work for at least 8 weeks.

An employee on sick leave receiving SSP:

An employee receiving SSP before 6 April 2026 should be paid the new, increased rate from 6 April 2026. However, if an employee was already off sick and their average weekly earnings would mean their SSP rate would reduce, they should be paid the new increased SSP rate instead of 80% of their average weekly earnings. This will apply if the employee:

• earns between £125 and £154.05 per week
• was receiving SSP before 6 April 2026, and is still off sick on that date

This ends when the employee returns to work or their SSP entitlement ends. If they return to work after 6 April 2026 and later go off sick again, they should be paid 80% of their average weekly earnings for that new absence, even if that absence is linked.

Waiting Days

An employee who has a period of sickness absence which has just started and would otherwise have had waiting days, these days will no longer apply from 6 April 2026.

If an employee restarts a sickness absence from 4 or 5 April 2026 and it continues on or after 6 April 2026, the number of qualifying SSP days depends on how long the sickness absence lasts. If it lasts:

• 3 days or less     — SSP is only paid for qualifying days on or after 6 April 2026
• 4 days or more  — SSP is paid for any qualifying days from the first day of the restarted sickness absence

Collective redundancy protective award – date of changes 6 April 2026

The maximum ‘protective award’ for failure to comply with collective redundancy consultation will double from 90 days’ pay to 180 days’ pay per affected employee.

Whistleblowing protections for sexual harassment – date of changes 6 April 2026

Sexual harassment will become a ‘qualifying disclosure’ under whistleblowing law. This will mean protection from detriment and unfair dismissal for whistleblowers making a sexual harassment disclosure.

Gender pay gap and menopause action plans – date of changes 6 April 2026 and 2027 (date to be confirmed)

Employers with 250 plus staff are encouraged to voluntarily create and publish action plans around supporting employees experiencing menopause and gender pay gaps. However, this will become mandatory sometime in 2027, although a specific date is yet to be confirmed this is expected in Spring 2027.

Trade union recognition – date of changes 6 April 2026

How a trade union can be recognised in a workplace will be simplified. Unions will no longer need to demonstrate that most workers in a proposed bargaining unit are likely to support recognition, removing the requirement for petitions or similar evidence. When recognition is decided by ballot, unions will only need a simple majority of votes cast, with the former 40% support requirement removed.

An updated Code of Practice on trade union recognition supporting this is expected to come into force in October 2026.

Fair Work Agency

The Fair Work Agency will be established on 7 April 2026, to:

• bring together existing enforcement bodies
• take on enforcement of other employment rights, such as holiday pay and statutory sick pay

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law & Human Resources at Key Group Services Ltd

LinkedIn

National Minimum Wage

National Minimum Wage increases each April. In preparation for this, please see below details of the current rates and also the rates that come into effect from 1st April 2026:

                                                         21 and Over       18 to 20              Under 18              Apprentice

April 2025 (Current Rate)             £12.21                 £10.00                £7.55                  £7.55

April 2026                                        £12.71                £10.85                £8.00                  £8.00

It is important to note, that Apprentices are entitled to the apprentice rate if they’re either:

• aged under 19
• aged 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship

If employees are receiving a pay rise, it is important that changes to their terms and conditions are confirmed in writing within one month of the change.

It is also important that you consider employees who are on a salary basis to ensure that the increase does not bring them below the National Living Wage.

The Department for Work and Pensions has released a policy paper outlining the benefit and pension rates for the 2026/2027 period. This document sets out the potential changes we could be seeing, these changes are as follows:

Statutory Payments

From 6^th April 2026 Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Parental Bereavement Pay and Statutory Neonatal Care Pay will also increase from the current rate of £187.18 to £194.32 per week (or 90% of the employees average weekly earnings if less than £194.32).

Statutory Sick Pay

From 6th April 2026 Statutory Sick Pay which is currently paid at a rate of £118.75 per week will increase to £123.25 per week.

The average gross weekly earnings required to qualify for the various forms of family leave pay is proposed to increase from £125.00 or more per week, to £129.00 or more per week from 6th April 2026.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law & Human Resources at Key Group Services Ltd

LinkedIn

I am sure that most of you would have seen the video that went viral from a recent Coldplay Concert where the CEO of the Tech firm ‘Astronomer’ was caught hugging a woman rumoured to be the Company’s Chief People Officer.

CEO Andy Byron, married with children had his arms wrapped around Kristin Cabot, appointed as CPO in 2024. She has not confirmed she was in the video.

Byron has since resigned and in a statement the Company said “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently that standard was not met.”

Can you regulate workplace relationships?

In some cases, workplace romances may cause no problems at all, particularly where the individuals work separately from one another, such as within different teams or at different locations. However, in other cases, workplace relationships can pose serious risks to employers, especially where the individuals work closely together, or one has managerial responsibilities for the other.

In such cases, other employees may complain of differential treatment or, in the case of a relationship between a supervisor and a more junior employee, that the supervisor shows favouritism towards their partner. 

These notions can have a detrimental impact on the whole team.

Further problems can also arise when the romantic relationship breaks down. In these situations, it is unlikely that the workers will agree to work together and, if ordered to do so, there is an increased possibility of argumentative or disruptive behaviour. 

If the working relationship becomes untenable in this way, businesses will need to consider separating the employees or, where their organisational structure makes this impractical, dismissing one of them. However, employers should tread carefully before proceeding to dismissal in these circumstances, as the dismissed employee could seek to bring claims for unfair dismissal and/or discrimination – most likely sex discrimination. Any decision to dismiss an employee following a romantic break up should therefore be firmly based on organisational requirements and not gender.

Mitigating the risk

Organisations may be able to prohibit romantic workplace relationships entirely. However, this can often have outcomes such as discouraging transparency and encouraging colleagues who enter into relationships to resign.

Instead,  you could consider implementing a workplace relationships policy. This can be used to set boundaries and outline guidelines regarding acceptable conduct. For example, the policy should make clear that employees must not allow personal relationships to influence their decision making and that they should continue to act professionally and uphold confidentiality at all times.

The policy should also require staff to disclose their relationships so they can be monitored. It could also remind employees that inappropriate behaviour at work or using the IT systems is unacceptable and may amount to a disciplinary offence.

In this way, a relevant policy will help you to outline expectations and will make it easier for you to take disciplinary action should employees fail to adhere to those standards.

Sexual harassment

It is also important that you remain alert to the possibility of sexual harassment. This risk is particularly acute where an employee is unwilling to accept a break up or makes undesired advances towards a colleague. You may remember our previous communications on this subject and that in order to comply with the positive duty to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, close attention should be paid to active and past workplace relationships.

You should conduct a risk assessment, provide training and implement measures to minimise the risk of sexual harassment occurring. A sexual harassment policy would be particularly helpful to set boundaries and warn staff of the consequences of such behaviour, often summary dismissal.

BP recently decided to strengthen its policy on workplace relationships and this has resulted in staff being ordered to disclose all intimate relationships, whether or not there is a potential or perceived conflict of interest, or face being sacked. For its senior leaders, the policy goes further, requiring them to declare any intimate relationships with employees or agency workers occurring within the last three years.

There are no legal rules governing relationships at work, but those relationships can give rise to conflicts of interest, actual or perceived bias in decision making and issues around confidentiality, as well as potential legal claims against the employer where a relationship goes south.

In response to the advent of the #MeToo movement, a lot of businesses introduced ‘relationship at work’ policies.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law & Human Resources at Key Group Services Ltd

LinkedIn

As you are aware, National Minimum Wage increases each April. In preparation for this, please see below details of the current rates and also the rates that come into effect from 1st April 2025:

	21 and Over	18 to 20	Under 18	Apprentice
April 2024 (Current Rate)	£11.44	£8.60	£6.40	£6.40
April 2025	£12.21	£10.00	£7.55	£7.55

It is important to note, that Apprentices are entitled to the apprentice rate if they’re either:

• aged under 19
• aged 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship

If employees are receiving a pay rise, it is important that changes to their terms and conditions are confirmed in writing within one month of the change.

It is also important that you consider employees who are on a salary basis to ensure that the increase does not bring them below the National Living Wage.
 
Statutory Payments
From 6^th April 2025 Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay and Parental Bereavement Pay will also increase from the current rate of £184.03 to £187.18 per week (or 90% of the employees average weekly earnings if less than £187.18).
 
Statutory Sick Pay
From 6^th April 2025 Statutory Sick Pay which is currently paid at a rate of £116.75 per week will increase to £118.75 per week.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law & Human Resources at Key Group Services Ltd

LinkedIn

The government has recently announced an overhaul of the UK’s apprenticeship system.

A new growth and skills levy will replace the existing apprenticeship levy, and this will also include a new foundation apprenticeship.  The government says that these new apprenticeships will give young people a route into careers in critical sectors, enabling them to earn a wage whilst developing vital skills.

The new levy will also allow funding for shorter apprenticeships giving learners more flexibility- currently an apprenticeship must run for at least 12 months.

The training available for funding under the new levy will develop over time and The Department for Education will expand further on the offer for funding and how it will be accessed in due course.

Employers are being asked to rebalance their apprenticeship funding with priority in investing in younger workers. Businesses will also be asked to fund more of their level 7 apprenticeships themselves. The level 7 apprenticeships focus more on older leaners and those already qualified in certain areas.

In July the government launched Skills England in July to identify skills needs. This new body for the skills system had its first report on the 24th of September, which highlighted the need for change.  It found that employer investment in training has been steadily declining in the last decade and that almost 1 in 10, or 2.5 million roles, are in critical demand in the UK. More than 90% of these are in roles that require training or education. Going forward, Skills England will play a crucial role in determining which types of training will be eligible for the expanded growth and skills levy and will shortly set out how they will work with stakeholders to inform their advice to the Department for Education.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited

LinkedIn

The new Employment Rights Bill introduced by the Labour Party, as part of the recent King’s Speech, proclaims a significant shift in employment law.

Here is a summary of some of the key changes to be aware of:

Dismissals and outsourcing

• Day one right not to be unfairly dismissed.

The Employment Rights Bill will give individuals the right not to be unfairly dismissed from their first day of employment. This marks a departure from the previous requirement, which requires two years of service for employees to qualify for protection against unfair dismissal meaning that the regular under two-year short service dismissals normally performed in these circumstances, would be no more.

Employees will benefit from immediate protection against unfair dismissal. This likely means that, employers, must have a fair and transparent reason for terminating employment, even within the probationary period. The legislation should ensure that employees are not dismissed without good cause, which aims to promote job security and fairness. It has been indicated that there will be exceptions for agency and seasonal workers.

It’s anticipated that the new law will still allow for probationary periods; however, the policy details suggest these periods will be governed by fair and transparent rules. If this proves to be the case you will need to follow a fair process, including providing reasons for dismissal and giving employees the opportunity to improve or respond to any concerns.

Whilst this change is seemingly good for employees, details remain unclear, but it appears this change is likely to increase the process around probationary periods and dismissal of new hires. It may make employers become more cautious about recruitment plans, and for them to place more rigour and time completing continuous assessment of new hires during the first few months of their employment.

Going forward, there will likely need to be more formal monitoring and feedback sessions during an employee’s probationary period, and these should be properly documented. Management will need to be focussed on areas of underperformance and conduct issues and not shy away from these matters, to ensure that any later decision to dismiss can be properly justified.

In the longer term, terminations are likely to be more expensive, and so we would expect that the number of tribunal claims will likely increase in this area.

• Restrictions on ‘fire and rehire’.

The practice of ‘fire and rehire’ is when you terminate an employee’s contract of employment before re-engaging them on different, often worse, terms and conditions.  It is anticipated that the new legislation will seek to impose stringent controls on dismissal and re-engagement practices. Dismissing and offering to re-engage workers on new terms or replacing existing workers with new workers engaged on new terms, will only be allowed as part of a restructuring for a business to remain viable and preserve its workforce when there’s genuinely no alternative.

Labour has pledged to provide effective legal remedies for workers affected by fire and rehire practices. While the specifics are yet to be detailed, the emphasis will be on ensuring that workers have access to justice and that employers who engage in such practices face significant penalties. This move is expected to deter employers from using fire and rehire as a tool for restructuring.

Labour has said the new code of practice on ‘fire and rehire’ (which came into force on 18 July 2024) is ‘inadequate’ and will be replaced with a strengthened version. Further details are unknown, but the proposals would require employers to have more than a ‘substantial reason’ for changing terms (as is currently required).  This new code will apparently set higher standards for employer conduct and again ensure greater employee protection.

The ultimate goal is to foster a collaborative approach in this area and ensure employees are treated fairly throughout the process.  The measure aims to ensure that such extreme steps of fire and rehire are only taken when absolutely necessary and not used as a cost-cutting exercise at the expense of employee rights.

• Thresholds for redundancy consultation.

Under the current law, the requirement for collective redundancy consultation is triggered when a certain number of employees are affected within a single establishment. An ‘establishment’ is usually a place of work or location.

Labour has said it will change the law so that collective consultation requirements will be triggered if redundancies reach a defined threshold across the business as a whole rather than just, looking at numbers within each site/workplace. This was not, however, mentioned in the King’s Speech. This change would bring the UK more in line with many EU countries. Labour has not said whether it will also amend the number of redundancies that would trigger collective consultation requirements (currently 20 within a period of 90 days).

Again, this legislative change will provide greater employee protection by ensuring that more redundancy scenarios trigger a collective consultation process and there will also be improved communication and transparency regarding redundancy plans as collective consultation processes require you to inform and consult with employees’ representatives about the reasons for redundancies, the number and types of employees affected, and the proposed method of selecting employees for redundancy.

• Outsourcing/TUPE.

Labour says it will strengthen the rights and protections for workers transferred under TUPE but hasn’t offered any more detail, yet.  In July, the TUPE rules changed to allow employers to consult directly with employees if the business had fewer than 50 employees (previously it was fewer than 10 employees) or if fewer than 10 employees would be transferred. This has removed collective consultation from a lot of TUPE processes and made the processes simpler and cheaper.

Labour could revert back, which would mean employers would have to go back to consulting collectively with employee reps for most TUPE situations making the process more time consuming and expensive, but as it would be returning to the previous rules it’s unlikely to have a substantial impact upon employers.

They may also look at making it harder to make transferring employees redundant or make changes to their terms and conditions of employment. It’s not clear how this could be achieved, however, employees already have several rights in a TUPE situation, including the right to compensation if they aren’t consulted with and unfair dismissal rights. They could also extend the group of people covered by TUPE, which would fit alongside their discussions about ending the three statuses in employment law (worker, employee and self-employed). Traditionally, TUPE has only applied to employees, but recent case law suggested workers were also covered. Labour have referred to ‘workers’ in their manifesto and this change would widen the pool affected in a TUPE situation.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited

LinkedIn

In Cairns v Royal Mail Group, the Claimant was employed as a postal delivery person on outdoor duties. He could no longer work outdoors due to a knee injury and osteoarthritis, which is considered a disability. Subsequently, he had moved to a supernumerary indoor role for a period.

The Respondent began consultation to dismiss him on grounds of ill-health retirement, as he could no longer work in his outdoor job. At the time, no other indoor vacancy was available, and so the Claimant was dismissed. As a result of this, the Claimant had made a claim for unfair dismissal. He also claimed that failing to wait for the imminent merger of the Claimant’s postal centre with another centre, which would have created vacancies for indoor roles, was a failure to make reasonable adjustments and discrimination arising from a disability.

The employment tribunal dismissed all claims, holding that there comes a time when a surplus job must come to an end. The Claimant appealed the outcome due to discrimination. Allowing the appeal, The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal had concentrated too much on the circumstances at the time of the dismissal. By doing this, they had failed to consider an essential part of the Claimant’s case: that at the time of his appeal, the Respondent should have kept him in employment so that he could be assigned to an indoor role, on the merger of the two postal offices.

It was the Claimant’s case that it would have been a reasonable adjustment to keep him in employment for this short period. He also claimed that his inability to work outdoors was a direct result of his disability, and therefore, the decision to dismiss him for this reason was discriminatory and unjustified given the plan for new indoor roles.

This case highlights the importance of considering reasonable adjustments whereby an employee is discovered to have a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Under the Act, employers are required to make changes to job roles and workplaces to enable individuals with a disability to carry out their functions as a non-disabled employee would. For your information, what is ‘reasonable’ will be judged against the following criteria:

• The extent of any disruption that an adjustment may cause to your organisation or other employees;
• The cost and your budget;
• Practicality;
• The effectiveness of the adjustment in helping the employee do their job; and
• The availability of financial or other assistance from certain schemes such as the government’s Access to Work programme.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited

LinkedIn

New legislation on allocation of tips and the corresponding Code of Practice is set come into force on the 1^st October 2024. This was confirmed by commencement regulations for the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 and Code of Practice which have been laid out by Parliament.

The key features to note from the Act are as follows:

• Employers are required to pass on tips in full to workers;
• Tips must be allocated in a fair and transparent way;
• Employers of businesses where tips are left more than occasionally are required to have a tipping policy in place;
• Tips must be distributed within one month following the month in which they were received;
• Workers have a right to request a copy of their tipping record to enable them to bring a claim to the employment tribunal where they believe they are not receiving tips they should be;
• Employers are required to maintain a record of how every tip has been dealt with for three years from the date the tip was paid; and
• Employers must have regard to the new statutory Code of Practice when distributing tips.

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited

LinkedIn

An important case recently heard in the Employment Tribunal highlights the importance of training managers on anti-harassment policies, and what they should do if harassment is reported to them.

In this case, KJ was employed by the British Council but had been working in Morocco as a teaching centre cluster lead when Morocco entered lockdown because of the Covid pandemic. Her role was deemed business critical and so she stayed in Morocco throughout this period, as well as Tony Reilly, who was the organisation’s most senior person in the country at that time. At first, their relationship was amicable as Reilly had helped KJ secure flights home to the UK when her father sadly passed away. However, the relationship soon became obsessive, and had culminated in stalking, constant messages, and sexual harassment.

KJ proceeded to lodge a formal grievance, however, the Company’s internal investigations revealed that there were no unwanted sexual advances. On the advice of her line manager, who said KJ should have been clearer in her communication that she did not want anything to happen, KJ emailed Reilly explaining how she felt. Reilly had replied with an apology, and an acknowledgement that the behaviour he displayed was wrong. However, even after this point, Reilly continued to message KJ and even turned up to work social events he knew KJ would be at, which made her even more uncomfortable.

Despite KJ’s report of Reilly’s actions to his line manager, no formal action was taken against Reilly by any member of management, or anyone at the British Council, in relation to the allegations made. As a result of this, KJ submitted a formal complaint to the British Council’s regional HR director. The examples of what she had experienced were taken straight from the organisation’s bullying and harassment policy, and included criminal behaviour, unwanted sexual advances, and physical touching. The organisation’s Speak Up Committee (SUC) – which was chaired by British Council CEO Andrew Williams – was notified of the complaint.

The investigation report was submitted to the SUC. Ultimately, the SUC concluded that the allegations of harassment were upheld but the allegations of sexual harassment were not. As part of its conclusion, the SUC stated: “Both parties have admitted that they were either exploring a romantic relationship or were being flirtatious with the other. [The claimant] has indicated that she was flirting back with Tony until early November, and Tony was also exploring the boundaries of their relationship.”

KJ raised concerns about the outcome with HR and resigned by email. She said receipt of the grievance outcome was “the final straw” that led to her resignation. She appealed the outcome of the grievance, and the organisation’s regional director was asked to be the final decision maker. As part of his findings, he said: “If [the claimant] was a victim of harassment/sexual harassment and stalking, why did she share such friendly, occasionally intimate, messages with TR, through November and December?” 

Employment judge Shore ruled that Reilly sexually harassed KJ and that the British Council was vicariously liable for his actions. Furthermore, the tribunal found that the SUC’s investigation was “deeply flawed” and “effectively said that the claimant had given a green light to Mr Reilly’s behaviours”. It found that the British Council failed to “proactively or reactively take steps to protect the claimant from Mr Reilly’s behaviour and/or take adequate effective measures to prevent it”.

The tribunal found the conclusion of the internally appointed investigator’s report – that there were no unwanted sexual advances – “inexplicable and entirely unsustainable” and “internally contradictory”. Ultimately, the tribunal stated that the SUC “erroneously and inappropriately attributed blame and responsibility to [KJ] for Mr Reilly’s harassing actions by dismissing his behaviour as having been encouraged by her” and “failed to uphold the complaint of sexual harassment by concluding that unwanted physical touching on two separate occasions did not constitute sexual harassment”. 

This case highlights to employers that a clear policy concerning sexual harassment must be a priority in protecting their employees and in the interests of the organisation.

It is the responsibility of employers to take active steps to implement the policy they have in place and enforce better training, communication and expected behaviours throughout their organisation. 

Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited

LinkedIn