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HR & EMPLOYMENT LAW Jackie Le Poidevin, Editor-in-Chief, HR Adviser |
Check if You’re Affected by the Mysterious Case of the Missing Bank Holiday
Do you have a holiday year which runs from 1 April to 31 March? If you do, then you may inadvertently find yourself giving your workers too little holiday in 2024-25, putting your business at risk of unlawful deductions from wages claims. Here, I explain what the problem is and what you need to do before 31 March to avoid a legal breach.
What’s the Problem?
England and Wales normally have 8 bank holidays a year. Sometimes, though, we get more – like when there was an extra day to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and King Charles’ coronation in 2023.
The issue now is that 2024’s Good Friday bank holiday fell early on 29 March. So if your holiday year finishes at the end of March, your workers got 9 bank holidays in 2023-24 and only have 7 in 2024-25.
You might, not unreasonably, think that this doesn’t matter because, across the 2 years, things will even out. However, depending on how your employment contracts are worded, you may need to give your workers an extra day’s holiday.
What Do We Need to Do Now?
If your holiday year ends on 31 March, you need to check your workers’ contracts to see which of the following applies:
- You offer more than the 28 days’ statutory minimum holiday entitlement
If this is the case, there’s no risk of you offering too little annual leave in the current holiday year.
- You offer 28 days’ holiday including bank holidays
In this case, you probably don’t need to worry. Your workers remain entitled to the statutory 28 days, regardless of whether there are more or fewer bank holidays in a particular year.
Having said that, you may have workers who only booked 20 days of non-bank-holiday leave as they always do, not realising that they were short-changing themselves. Arguably, that’s their own fault, not yours. However, if you don’t give workers a reasonable opportunity to take their annual leave entitlement and encourage them to take it, they’re entitled to carry over the leave into the next holiday year.
It’s likely to be difficult for workers to prove why they didn’t take that one day of annual leave. However, if you haven’t alerted your workforce to the missing bank holiday and someone claims at this late stage that they haven’t taken their full entitlement as a result, you might consider letting them carry forward a day’s annual leave. Alternatively, if you can spare them, you could tell them to take it before 31 March. You must give 2 days’ notice to force someone to take 1 day’s holiday.
- You offer 20 days’ holiday plus bank holidays
This wording is more of a problem. If workers take 20 days’ holiday plus only 7 bank holidays, they won’t be getting their minimum legal entitlement. They could bring an unlawful deduction from wages claim because you’ve underpaid them for their holidays. It doesn’t matter if you overpaid them last year.
To forestall such a claim, you could again let workers carry forward the 1 day of holiday they didn’t have the opportunity to take.
The Future
There are provisions in the Employment Rights Bill to establish a Fair Work Agency which, among other things, will have the power to fine employers who underpay holiday. This will mirror HMRC’s current power to enforce payment of the national minimum wage.
I’ll be looking at the proposals in the June issue of HR Adviser. However, once the agency is set up (which there’s no date for yet), the consequences of holiday pay errors could become much more serious.
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HEALTH & SAFETY Emma Lampka, Editorial Board Member, Health & Safety Adviser and Risk Assessment & Compliance |
Are Your Accident Investigations Effective at Preventing and Reducing Risk?
With 138 people being killed at work and 61,663 instances of RIDDOR-reportable injuries in 2023/24 due to work-related accidents and illness (Health and Safety Executive statistics), your accident investigation process is vital to help you establish the root causes of any accidents and to find measures to reduce the risk of similar accidents happening again. If your accident investigation process is not effective, then you run the risk of accidents recurring, with the knock-on effects of costly investigations, injuries, sickness absence, expensive overtime or agency staff costs and potential liability claims.
The Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employees to plan, organise, control, monitor and review their health and safety arrangements. Accident investigation forms part of this process – not only for learning lessons but should a civil action be brought against you, you are expected to make a full disclosure of how the accident occurred.
6 Tips to Create an Effective Accident Investigation Process
To ensure your accident investigation processes are effective, follow these tips:
- Decide and Document the Type of Accidents You Will Investigate
For example, you might decide to investigate accidents but not near miss incidents. This may be, for example, because the company has not suffered a loss due to any near misses in recent years. Whatever you decide, you must investigate any accidents fully, to help you decide the likelihood of the accident recurring and the severity of loss to the business or workers. In turn, this will determine the potential consequences of an accident. You may also decide to investigate lower-level incidents if you are seeing a trend of these.
- Start Your Investigation as Soon as Possible
You should initiate your investigation as soon as possible because people’s memories can fade quickly. Also, your management team will be more motivated to implement prevention measures immediately after an incident or accident.
- Recruit Your Investigation Team
Get the right people involved in the investigation i.e. the injured party (if available), people who know the work area and the activities undertaken there, the supervisor, the health and safety competent person, as well as any technical advisory personnel, depending on the type of incident.
- Gather the Evidence
You will need not only the evidence of what happened leading up to and during the incident but also historical information such as training records, maintenance records, personnel records, previous incidents, audits and workplace inspections. This additional information can help you understand the circumstances of the incident, by ensuring that all statutory requirements, such as provision of training and maintenance, have been completed.
- Investigate the Root Cause
Your investigation should not only deal with the immediate cause of the incident but you need to get to the root causes of the accident to ensure something similar does not happen again.
Let’s say that oil has been spilt on the floor, creating a slip risk – the team needs to dig deeper to understand why the oil was there in the first place – and one effective way to do this is use the ‘5 whys’ technique. For example:
- Why did the accident happen? The injured party slipped on a patch of oil on the floor.
- Why was the oil on the floor? The forklift truck in the area was leaking.
- Why was the forklift truck leaking? Because it had not undergone routine maintenance.
- Why had it not undergone routine maintenance? Because it was not on a maintenance schedule.
- Why was it not on a maintenance schedule? Because a maintenance schedule had not been developed for forklift trucks due to management’s failure to implement routine maintenance.
- Put it Right
Once the accident investigation has given you key information, you can now develop an action plan of remedial activities. Using the example above, you would start by creating a routine maintenance schedule for the forklift trucks; by doing so, you are reducing the likelihood of this incident ever happening again.
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PAYROLL Sarah Bradford, Editor-in-Chief, Pay & Benefits Adviser |
9 Key Tasks to Prepare for Payroll Year End
The 2024/25 tax year comes to an end on 5 April 2025. Employers will need to undertake a range of tasks to put the 2024/25 tax year to bed and also to get the 2025/26 tax year up and running. Follow our 9 important tasks to get ready for payroll year end.
Task 1. Register Any Changes to Payrolled Benefits
Before 5 April 2025, employers who wish to payroll benefits for the first time in 2025/26 will need to register to do so with HMRC (see: tinyurl.com/yueuw975).
Likewise, employers who no longer want to payroll benefits payrolled in 2024/25 will need to cancel the registration of those benefits. It should be noted that payrolling will be mandatory for all benefits except employment-related loans and living accommodation from April 2026, and employers who have yet to move to payrolling may want to make the switch now.
Task 2. Recalculate Directors’ National Insurance on an Annual Basis
Directors have an annual earnings period for National Insurance and their contributions and those of their employer are calculated on an annual basis using the annual thresholds. Where the alternative arrangements have been used to calculate the liability in-year on the earnings for each pay period, the liability must be recalculated on an annual basis when the director is paid for the final time in 2024/25. The payroll software will do this – but remember to tick the box to indicate that the payment is the last payment to the director in 2024/25.
Task 3. Send the Final FPS to HMRC
The last Full Payment Submission (FPS) should be sent to HMRC at or before the date on which the employees are paid for the final time in 2024/25. When sending the last FPS of the tax year, ensure you tick the box to indicate that it is the final FPS for 2024/25.
Task 4. Send an EPS if Needed
If the employer omitted to put ‘yes’ in the ‘final submission for the year’ box when sending the last FPS of 2024/25, they will need to send an employer payment summary (EPS) with this information by 19 April 2025. An employer will also need to submit an EPS if they did not make any payments to employees in last tax month.
Task 5. Pay Outstanding PAYE and NIC
Any outstanding PAYE and NIC must be paid by 22 April 2025 where the payment is made electronically. If payment is made by cheque, it must reach HMRC by Friday 18 April 2025.
Task 6. Give Employees their P60
Employees on the payroll on 5 April 2025 must be given their P60 (statement of pay and deductions) by 31 May 2025.
Task 7. Provide Employees with Details of their Taxable Benefits in Kind
Employees who have received taxable expenses and benefits in 2024/25 must be given details of those benefits. Where the benefits have been payrolled, this must be provided before 1 June 2025. For benefits reported on Form P11D, employees must be given details of those benefits by 6 July 2025.
Task 8. File the P11D(b) and Any P11Ds
Non-payrolled benefits must be reported to HMRC on Form P11D by 6 July 2025. The P11D(b) (employer’s declaration and Class 1A National Insurance return) must be filed by the same date. Both must be filed online as HMRC no longer accept paper copies.
Employers who want to set up, amend or cancel a PAYE Settlement Agreement must do so by 5 July 2025.
Task 9. Get Ready for 2025/26.
Before paying employees for the first time in the 2025/26 tax year (but after running the 2024/25 payroll year-end), employers will need to update their payroll software for the new tax year. They will also need to update employees’ tax codes and National Insurance category letters where appropriate.