|
HR & EMPLOYMENT LAW Jackie Le Poidevin, Editor-in-Chief, HR Adviser |
Your Guide to the 2025/26 Employment Rates and Limits
It’s not only the national minimum wage (NMW) that increases each April. Here are 6 further increases you need to be aware of, which are all taking effect on 6 April. Note that the NMW rate rise (which I covered in the April issue of HR Adviser) came into force on 1 April.
- The Lower Earnings Limit
Individuals need to earn a certain amount to be entitled to various statutory payments, including statutory sick pay (SSP) and the different types of family leave pay. They’ll now need to earn £125 a week (up from £123) to be eligible.
- Statutory Sick Pay
This is increasing from £116.75 to £118.75 per week.
At the moment, anyone earning less than the lower earnings limit won’t be eligible for SSP at all. Under the Employment Rights Bill, workers whose earnings are below this threshold will receive either SSP or 80% of their normal pay, whichever is lower.
We don’t know when this change will take effect but probably some time next year.
- Family Leave Pay
Statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental and parental bereavement pay are increasing from £184.03 to £187.18 per week. (Of course, you still need to pay the first 6 weeks of maternity leave at 90% of the employee’s average actual weekly earnings, after which the statutory rate kicks in.)
Also, the new right to neonatal care leave is coming into force on 6 April and this will also be paid at a weekly rate of £187.18.
- Statutory Redundancy Pay
If you make an employee redundant, there’s a formula for calculating their statutory redundancy pay. The maximum amount of a week’s pay for this purpose is going up from £700 to £719 for redundancies taking place after 6 April. This means the maximum statutory redundancy payment will rise from £21,000 to £21,570.
- Tribunal Award Limits
Unfair dismissal awards are also partly based on the statutory amount of a week’s pay. As above, this is rising to £719, so the maximum unfair dismissal basic award (which is calculated like redundancy pay) will be £21,570. The maximum compensatory award for ordinary unfair dismissal will be £118,223 (up from £115,115) or 1 year’s basic salary, if lower.
- Vento Bands
These are used by the employment tribunals to determine injury to feelings awards (usually in discrimination cases). For claims made after 6 April, the new bands are:
- Lower band (for less serious cases): £1,200 to £12,100 (up from £1,200 to £11,700).
- Middle band (for ‘in-between’ cases): £12,100 to £36,400 (up from £11,700 to £35,200).
- Upper band (for the most serious cases, such as where there’s been a lengthy campaign of harassment): £36,400 to £60,700 (up from £35,200 to £58,700).
In exceptional cases, award may exceed £60,700.
| Tip |
| Some subscribers have been asking the Ask the Experts Email Helpdesk if we’re producing a Neonatal Care Leave Policy and the answer is yes! It will up on the Online Resource Centre for HR Adviser subscribers by the 6 April implementation date. I’m just waiting for any additional guidance from the Government. I’ll also be covering the new obligations in your June Special Issue on Leave Rights. |
|
HEALTH & SAFETY Emma Lampka, Editorial Board Member, Health & Safety Adviser and Risk Assessment & Compliance |
Are Your Systems of Work Really Safe?
Workplace accidents can have devastating consequences, often due to inadequate safety systems. Ensuring a safe system of work requires proper risk assessments, training and structured protocols. Employers must plan, monitor and review their safety arrangements to protect workers. Find out the key steps to help you to develop an effective safe system of work and prevent serious incidents.
What Happened?
A 63-year-old engineer had his leg amputated after his leg became trapped when the cutting bed of a laser cutting machine he was working on dropped and trapped both his legs. Pearson Hydraulics Ltd., Lincoln, pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, was fined £96,333 and £10,701 in costs.
A major finding was that the company had left its employees to work out their own methods of working without providing a suitable risk assessment, training or a safe system of work (SSOW).
The Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 also require employees to plan, organise, control, monitor and review their health and safety arrangements. This includes working with employees, ensuring they have the right training and to develop safe working practices.
4 Tips for an Effective SSOW
To ensure your systems are effective you should create a SSOW, as we outline below.
- Undertake a Risk Assessment
When developing your SSOW, you need to understand the risks to your employees. You must understand what is involved in the task and then, step-by-step, create a breakdown of the tasks to help you to identify the risks at each step.
Identify who will be undertaking the work and how risks may differ for each person, for example, a young worker may not have the experience of a more mature worker.
List all of the current control measures currently in place, such as engineering controls, administrative controls such as training and, finally, any personal protective equipment (PPE) or respiratory protective equipment (RPE).
Determine the risk level using a risk matrix to determine the likelihood of the risk causing an injury and the severity/consequence of the potential injury. This will help you to understand if there’s a significant risk and any additional actions you should take. These could be in the form of administrative control such as a SSOW, as shown by the Pearson Hydraulics case.
- Provide Training, Information and Supervision
All employees and others who undertake work on behalf of the organisation must be competent to undertake the work they are carrying out. Competency is defined as having the correct level of knowledge, skills and experience to carry out the work safely and effectively.
- Develop a SSOW
Your risk assessment should drive the SSOW you want to develop. Your SSOW should detail the task to be carried out, breaking this down into the component parts of the whole job, with step-by-step details of each activity. An example could be cleaning a conveyor belt, which would then include hose down and wipe down.
The SSOW should also identify the risk factors, for example, the absence of nip bars is a risk factor on a conveyor and the SSOW should ensure that it’s not possible to access rollers when the machine is in motion. Finally, the SSOW should identify the safe means of conducting the activity. Using the example of cleaning the rollers on a conveyor, an option could be inch, stop, lock, then clean on a repeated activity so that the employee can only intervene when the machine or conveyor is locked.
- Where Necessary, Issue a Permit to Work
Some activities may need a more rigorous SSOW in the form of a permit to work. Permits to work should be issued by the company for high risk work such as confined space working, working at height, isolation of electrical systems and hot working.
|
PAYROLL Sarah Bradford, Editor-in-Chief, Pay & Benefits Adviser |
Comply with this Week’s New NMW and NLW Rates
The National Living Wage (NLW) and the National Minimum Wage (NMW) increased from 1 April 2025. The new rates come into effect from the start of the first pay reference period beginning on or after that date. As an employer, you have a legal obligation to pay your workers at least the NLW or NMW for their age. Where workers are paid at or close to the previous rates, it’s important that their pay is increased to at least the new statutory minimum rates. Employers who fail to comply will not only need to pay workers the shortfall, they will also face financial penalties.
Be Clear on the New Rates
The NLW wage is payable to workers aged 21 and over. Workers under the age of 21 who have reached school leaving age must be paid at least the NMW for their age.
A separate apprentice rate applies to apprentices under the age of 19 and also to apprentices over the age of 19 who are in the first year of their apprenticeship. Apprentices over the age of 19 who have completed the first year of their apprenticeship are entitled to the NLW/NMW for their age.
The NLW and NMW rates applying from 1 April 2025 are set out below:
| NLW: workers aged 21 and over | £12.21 per hour |
| NMW: workers aged 18 to 20 | £10.00 per hour |
| NMW: workers aged under 18 who have reached school leaving age | £7.55 per hour |
| Apprentice rate | £7.55 per hour |
For workers paid the statutory minimum, the new rates equate to a pay rise of 77p per hour for workers aged 21 and over, a pay rise of £1.40 per hour for workers aged 18 and 20 and a pay rise of £1.15 per hour for workers aged under 18 and for apprentices under the age of 19 or aged 19 and over and in the first year of their apprenticeship.
It’s important to note that the NLW and NMW legislation applies to all workers, not just to those who meet the definition of employees. However, it does not apply to workers providing their services on a self-employed basis.
What to Do if You Provide Accommodation
Where an employer provides a worker with accommodation, the statutory minimum that they need to pay is reduced by the accommodation offset to reflect the provision of the accommodation. The amount paid to the worker plus the accommodation offset must be at least equal to pay at the NLW/NMW for the worker’s age.
From 1 April 2025, the accommodation offset is set at £10.66 per day (£74.62 per week where accommodation is provided for 7 days per week).
For example, if an employee aged 26 is paid £11 an hour, works 30 hours a week and also receives free accommodation for 7 days a week, his pay for NLW purposes is £404.62 ((30 hours @ £11 per hour) + £74.62)). This is equivalent to £13.48 per hour, which is more than the NLW. The employer has met their obligation, despite the hourly rate being below the NLW.