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Compensation in Discrimination Claims set to Increase New “bands” for calculating compensation to Claimants for “injury to feelings” in discrimination claims have been published, which come into effect for claims brought on or after today, 11 September 2017. For claims issued from today, compensation for “injury to feelings” will be at the following rates:

• Lower band: £800 – £8,400
• Middle band: £8,400 – £25,200
• Upper band: £25,200 – £42,000
• Exceptional cases: £42,000 +

What is injury to feelings? Injury to feelings is compensation awarded in discrimination claims. It is compensation to a Claimant for “injured feelings” – i.e. the hurt, upset, anxiety or distress that they have suffered as a result of discriminatory acts. A Claimant does not usually need to show medical evidence or a diagnosis of any psychiatric injury arising from the discrimination in order to claim injury to feelings. Where a Tribunal is satisfied that a Claimant has been subject to unlawful discrimination, it then assesses how much upset a Claimant has suffered, looking at all of the circumstances of the case before it, to decide how much compensation should be awarded for injured feelings. The Tribunal does that by categorising treatment into “bands”:

• The lower band. 

This band is used in less serious cases of discrimination, for example where the act of discrimination is an isolated or one off occurrence.

• The middle band. 

This band is helpfully described by the Tribunal as being for “serious cases, which do not merit an award in the highest band”.

• The upper band. 

The Tribunal will find that an award in the upper band is appropriate in the most serious cases, for instance whether there has been a lengthy campaign of discriminatory treatment.  Only in the most exceptional cases will an award for injury to feelings exceed the upper band limits. Once the Tribunal has determined which band the matter falls into, it then looks to the set compensation levels for that band in order to determine how much compensation the Claimant should receive.  So, if the Tribunal determines that the compensation awarded should be in the lower band, the Claimant will receive between £800 – £8,400 compensation for injury to feelings.  The Tribunal also has the power to award a Claimant other compensation on top of that, including for any financial loss suffered, and for being unfairly dismissed (if applicable). Why the change? Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal made clear that it felt that compensation for injury to feelings had fallen behind inflation and was therefore in need of adjustment. That prompted the increase. What does this mean? The increase in the compensation bands is dramatic. Previously, the limits were £600 – £6,000 for the lower band; £6,000 – £18,000 for the middle band; and £18,000 – £30,000 for the upper band. As a result, the potential exposure to employers in discrimination claims has markedly increased. For discrimination claims brought on or after 11 September 2017, the position is simple; a Claimant can now recover more than they would have done had they issued the claim last week. That said, it is important to take this uplift against the backdrop that awards in the upper and exceptional bands are rare, with the current average award for discrimination claims being just under £14,000. Whilst that average may increase, it is unlikely that many will ever face the upper band awards above. For ongoing claims, the position is less clear. The Tribunal may exercise its discretion to apply a percentage increase on the previous bands (likely a 10% increase), though it is unlikely it would apply the new bands absolutely to any existing claims. What happens in practice we will wait and see… So, the advice to employers does not change: tread carefully and try not to unlawfully discriminate against employees…whilst it was potentially costly before, it is even more so now! If you are facing any allegations of discrimination, or are faced with the task of managing employees who you believe are likely to allege discrimination, please do not hesitate to get in touch with one of the team for advice. If you would like more information on the content of this article please contact our Employment Team on 01603 281153. Note: The content of this article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific legal advice should be taken in any particular circumstance.

On Friday 1 September 2017, shortly after 2 am, former England football captain Wayne Rooney was seen by the police to be driving a Black VW Beetle, which transpired to belong to woman he had met earlier that evening when socialising with friends. At the time, the police noticed a rear tail light had gone out and intended to follow the vehicle but it pulled over with Rooney seen to be at the wheel with a female passenger. Rooney was suspected to have been intoxicated and provided a positive roadside breath test before being taken to the police station where the reading was confirmed.

Rooney having been arrested and charged with an offence of driving with excess alcohol appeared before Stockport Magistrates’ Court on 18 September 2017 where he tendered his ‘guilty’ plea. The Court heard that the breathalyser reading showed the footballer’s alcohol level was 104mg per 100 millilitres of breath, which is almost three time the prescribed legal limit (35mg). The court also heard that Rooney currently had three points on his driving licence for a speeding offence on August 24 2016.

Rooney’s legal team acknowledged the severity of the matter, and during mitigation invited District Judge Termperley to consider not imposing a community order because of his ongoing charitable work the footballer carries out. Alternatively, the District Judge was asked to resolve the matter by way of a driving ban and financial penalty. In doing so, the Court were also informed that Everton Football Club were to fine him two weeks wages as a result, which is understood to be in the region of about £300,000.

However, District Judge Temperley stated this was a serious matter that placed Rooney and other road users at risk due to his poor judgment that particular evening. Whilst the judge accepted Rooney’s remorse was genuine and he was aware of the adverse effects the events that night has have had, the judge was not convinced that the imposition of a large fine would have the same effect.

Accordingly, the 31 year old was disqualified from driving for two years and ordered to perform 100 hours of unpaid work as part of a 12 month community order. Rooney was also ordered to pay £170 in respect of prosecution costs and a victim surcharge.

In a statement of apology issued after the hearing, Rooney said,

“Following today’s court hearing I want publicly to apologise for my unforgivable lack of judgment in driving while over the legal limit. It was completely wrong.

I have already said sorry to my family, my manager and chairman and everyone at Everton FC. Now I want to apologise to all the fans and everyone else who has followed and supported me throughout my career.

Of course I accept the sentence of the court and hope that I can make some amends through my community service.”

Rooney has agreed with leave of the Court to undertake a drink-driving rehabilitation course, which if successfully completed in the allocated time could reduce his driving ban by a period of 24 weeks. In the meantime, he will have to rely on chauffeurs to and from football training and for his unpaid work requirement, which will be costly.

While Brexit and its likely outcomes for the UK as a whole looms large in the national debate, the decision makers of businesses surveyed by Price Bailey in a recent report appear to be shrugging off the doubt and negativity surrounding it.

Every business would like the clarity and certainty that comes with knowing how the wider economy will fare and what the government of the day will do. In reality, no business ever really gets it. The same applies for Brexit. Of course, businesses would like an idea of what the effects of Brexit are but no one can know for sure.

In our interactive report, “Inside the Minds of Business Leaders” we uncovered some telling statistics about how Brexit is affecting businesses in Norfolk, Cambridge, Hertfordshire and London.

Brexit remains the stuff of news headlines that, so far, is having little or no direct impact on these businesses.

• More than half (55%) of decision makers say that so far it has made no difference to their business
• A third (35%) say they have seen some negative impacts
• Less than half (44%) expect some negative impacts in 12 months’ time. However, just 13% expect the impact to be positive
• 73% say a soft Brexit would be preferable for their own business, while 15% would prefer a hard Brexit

Brexit is not yet a top concern for most.

• Only a quarter (26%) identified Brexit in their top three business concerns
• 31% expect benefits from Brexit for their business in five years’ time while 32% expect negative outcomes

Many will have regretted the vote to leave: most bosses were ‘remainers’ (71% thought the UK was better off being inside the EU) but few now want to revisit the arguments – when asked what one thing the government could do to support their business, just 7% propose negotiating to somehow keep the UK inside the EU. This suggests they take a pragmatic approach – treating the world as it is rather than how they wish it were.

The research also paints a picture of businesses that, rather than worry about matters beyond their control, are instead focusing on the opportunities in front of them. The decision makers and bosses in the report show that they are out there in their individual markets confidently working to outsmart and outgrow their competition and not letting gloom or uncertainty hold them back.

Perhaps most telling is their short versus medium-term outlook. A third think Brexit will have a negative impact in the short term, but a third think it will be positive in the long term.

This suggests they are more than willing to work with the new post-Brexit reality and exploit the opportunities that arise from it, and so outperform less able and often larger rivals, who will be slower to respond to the new competitive landscape.

To find out more you can view the interactive report where we go into further details on business growth, planning, exporting and wellbeing. (Created by RCD Digital Marketing).

As a new year dawns, many companies will be thinking ahead to the next twelve months and how to deliver business success. Leaders will be considering their strategic approaches, their business plans, and how they can put into practice activities which effect the biggest return. But its within an organisation’s people that lies the key to achieving objectives and delivering performance.

It is the people, the employees, who are the beating heart of an organisation. They are the ones who are ‘doing’ every day. They are the ones who are implementing plans, dealing with customers and putting policies and plans into practice. And to do this effectively and efficiently, and in a way that brings continuous improvement, employees must feel motivated, inspired, and empowered. They must be engaged.

Engaged employees will deliver more for an organisation and so as leaders look ahead to how to deliver their goals this year, they should consider how they are engaging their people.

Leaders need to understand their people, find out what drives them, what matters to them, and what are the barriers to them doing their job. Leaders need to listen and they can do this in a variety of ways, from managing by walking around to online surveys.

And leaders need to demonstrably use this information, making changes where appropriate, and where not, providing feedback. This knowledge and insight can provide the foundation for building a targeted engagement plan which is bespoke to the organisation and which meets the needs of employees whilst aligning with organisational goals.

Communication, in all its forms, is absolutely fundamental to building engaged workforces. It needs to be timely, clear, accessible, open, and consistent. It can be in person, online and offline. But it must happen and regularly – because mistrust builds in communication voids and this leads to disengaged and demotivated workforces.

Employees must have an opportunity to influence and make choices, for example, through a suggestion scheme. In this way, employees will feel empowered, that they can make a difference – and they will. Continuous improvement thrives in companies where employees have influence.

The role of the manager is critical, because, as we know, people will leave managers not organisations. And so they need to be equipped to engage their people. They need to have access to management development, they need to have clarity about their role, and there needs to be HR policies in place which provide a flexible framework.

Feedback is vital too, and in particular, recognition from leaders and managers. This needs to be in the moment. People need to know how they are doing as this allows them to continue to grow and develop.

Running through it all must be a tangible commitment to wellbeing, which, through appropriate engagement activities, empowers employees around self-care and being themselves at work.

And leaders need to keep listening and being aware of what is happening in their organisation. Engagement isn’t a one-off activity plan, it is ongoing, it changes, it becomes a cultural way of working.

Because through engaged, motivated, inspired people, businesses will achieve – and exceed – their goals.

Turning strategy into action

New Anglia LEP’s Head of Strategy, Lisa Roberts, looks ahead to the next steps in the Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk

“The New Year marks an exciting point for us – it’s now that we produce the implementation and delivery plans which will outline how we’re going to achieve the targets set out in the new Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk.

So how do we start identifying the priority actions and activities which will deliver new jobs, new businesses and improved skill levels?

Well the key to success is definitely partnership. We’ve worked with public and private sector partners throughout the development of the strategy and we’ve now asked them to start feeding back on their current activities so we can pull together a comprehensive ‘map’ of what’s currently under way. They’re telling us what they deliver at the moment under each of the priority themes and how they measure the success of these activities. This will form the starting point for our delivery plans – we need to identify both best practice and gaps to work out where the interventions need to be made.

Now we’re also really keen to hear from you so that your activities and plans can form part of this work – after all, its local businesses which will create new jobs and growth.

Hundreds of you joined us at events in the summer to feed into the development of the strategy and now we’d like you to spare a little time to help us at this stage too.

We’re hosting events with the Chamber across Norfolk in January and February where you’ll be able to feed into our delivery plans and meet our team. We look forward to seeing you and thank you all for your support so far. You can find out about the events and book yur free place on the Chamber events page. We’re coming to King’s Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth so make sure you come and take part.”

You can read more about the strategy at www.newanglia.co.uk

We are delighted to announce that we are working with The Medic Mind, a new startup which has found an excellent gap in the market to help students get into the medical school of their choice.

The Story of Medic Mind

The Medic Mind was founded in 2016 by Kunal Dasani and Mohil Shah who are both studying Medicine and UCL in London. Together, they accumulated over 1,000 hours of tutoring to students looking to studying medicine and found that most people could not afford the standard £200 for a UKCAT or BMAT Course. 

They quickly saw a gap in the market to provide online course, one-to-one tuition and mentoring to help give young students the support they need. The online BMAT and UKCAT courses start from just £35, a fraction of their competitors and they include free online resources too such as past papers and mark schemes, something that was previously inaccessible.

The response has been fantastic as they have had thousands of pupils sign up and they have had a 92% success getting their pupils into University and an average UKCAT score of 720 where the national average is 570. 

What We Are Doing For Them

Since SEO is our speciality, we are working hard with Medic Mind to improve their organic search rankings on Google for terms relating to BMAT and UKCAT courses, tuition and mentoring. 

We have started with a big clean up of the website which has been challenging since the website is built on Weebly and is not designed for scalable SEO changes. It has been a very manual process to add meta-data, rel=canonical tags and h1 tags, hence we will consider moving the website to WordPress in the near future. The changes thus far have been targeted at incorporating our target keywords into the meta-titles, descriptions and h1 headings. Plus, we have carried a full fix up to ensure no broken links, crawl errors and a strong well-indexed sitemap.

For content, we are looking to create a number of useful guides to position the company as a leader in the industry relating to everything in medical school preparation. This involves a series of guides, interviews and resources to ‘hook’ potential students.

In terms of links and PR, we are leveraging the founders’ success but getting features in start up websites, UCL’s news online and also very medical specific websites.

We look forward to taking the company from strength-to-strength and are confident that we can use SEO to drastically increase sales and help build the brand into a household name.

Get into a conversation with someone about pest control and immediately most would refer to rat catchers and wasp nest removers. In contrast, the UK market size for pest control continues to grow with an estimated value of over £320m per annum. It does include rats and mice, more about that later, but it also includes many other areas which many people would not think about.  This blog article gives an insight into what pest management really is and how businesses can protect their assets and reputation by having a simple preventative contract in place.  In the UK there is considerable legislation concerning the responsibility of property and business owners with regard to pest control. Having pest control is not the law, but there are certain acts which you should know. If your business is in the food chain, you will need to follow very stringent pest control practices for health, safety and hygiene. However, all businesses and employers have a duty of care with regard to protecting its workforce from pests and the hazards posed by pest infestation in the workplace.  Here are some of the acts and what they mean to you: The Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949.  This act often relates to the presence of pests either on land or within a building that are affecting other properties. The act enables Local Authorities to take enforcement action to eradicate pests. This act also includes businesses which manufacture, store and transport foodstuffs as contamination by pests has serious health risks and covers aspects relating to insect infestation of foodstuffs as well.  A good example of this is when we were recently called to sort out an infestation of rodents that were causing major issues to a business. The problem was that the root cause was within a building next door where the occupiers didn’t manage the issue until the local authority intervened.   Food Safety Act 1990  Under this act, businesses must ensure that the food they sell is safe to the health of the people consuming it. The act outlines the need for business owners to take due diligence – by employing a professional pest controller to monitor and deal with infestations in a timely manner, helps you in meeting the obligations laid out in the act.  We have many contracts within the food chain. Every location has a detailed service report pack where we record every visit and the treatments carried out. We also manage electronic fly killers, perform fly counts and record these, a must for certain levels detailing what type of fly was present to enable trend analysis.  Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995  These regulations are aimed at food proprietors and cover the basic rules that state that you should make sure all food is supplied in a hygienic way, all food safety hazards such as rats and mice are identified and that you know the critical activities for food safety and that safety controls are in place. A regular pest monitoring contract can assist you meet your obligations to these regulations and provide you with constant security from rodent or insect infestation.  Typically, we visit a premises 6 to 8 times each year (some monthly) to check on any pest activity. By law, you only lay toxic bait when rodents are present. We bait and revisit 3 times or until the issue is resolved. Following this we revert back to non-toxic baits. Health and Safety at Work Act 1974  All employers must take necessary measures to secure the health, safety and welfare of their employees and visiting contractors. This would include making areas safe and clean.  We get called to manage projects for bird control where birds become an issue attacking staff and contractors or bird droppings causing issues on vehicles, let alone the diseases that can be spread if not properly managed.  Technology drivers within Pest Control Even pest control is getting techy. At Abate, we have been using laser systems for bird control. We have installed one at Sizewell Power Station to reduce the amount of gulls nesting on the roofs. One laser covers 16 roofs and is charged by a small wind turbine and operated through GPRS so engineers can manage it directly from the office. 

We are also now using a new type of rodent box which will send a signal via wi-fi if the box has evidence of pests. Some may say that’s not a bad innovation. But when you think more, managing pest control on a food manufacturing site and you have 50 rodent boxes. This system will alert us to the exact box, which also means you only have to make that part of the site live with toxic bait.  

Today we have the ability for a client to log in to our client portal which will show them their pest control contract, locations, visits and treatments carried out. In 2018 we are developing a new online reporting suite of systems which will take us to a new level of enhanced management. It will be a booking system linking the office to the client and the technician.  Can we assist? We offer discreet assistance with pest-related problems to businesses at very competitive rates. We offer treatments and rolling contracts which are tailored to your needs. Our contracts provide businesses with any necessary treatments, regular inspections and free call outs should you need us between your visits.

At Abate, we manage rodents, insects, birds, woodworm and specialist hygiene services.  We are based near Wymondham and have been in the industry for over 18 years and employ a team of technicians to cover Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex and parts of Herefordshire and Bedfordshire.  We offer a no obligation report and survey to assist you with your pest control needs so please get in touch if we can help you via the website or by calling us on 01953 603390.