Blog Posts: January 2011

A very good and inspirational article on the benefits of restoratitve justice. "When Joanne Nodding met the man who raped her, the first thing she noticed, she says, was how scared he was. "He thought I was going to be angry," she says, "he was expecting me to shout and scream and tell him that I hated him. But if I had [been uncontrollably angry] they wouldn't have allowed me to meet him." Instead she told the man, who cannot be named, how she had felt during the atta....

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is to launch a legal challenge over changes to the civil service redundancy scheme, as its members voted overwhelmingly to reject the reforms. PCS will go to the High Court this week in the row over the cuts, which cap the payouts to civil servants at 21 months’ pay for a voluntary redundancy and 12 months for a compulsory redundancy. It said that 90 per cent of the union’s 80,000 members rejected the change in a ballot result ....

So we know that the Default Retirement Age (DRA) is to be phased out this year, the government has confirmed. The BBC observe that this means employers will no longer be allowed to dismiss staff just because they have reached the age of 65. The Department for Business said that as well as benefiting individuals, "the freedom to work for longer will provide a boost to the UK economy". Presently, firms can use the DRA to make staff retire at 65. Ditching the DRA was first propo....

In its quest to be considered pro jobs creation, the government is considering calls for employees taking a company to tribunal to pay a fee which would be refunded if the claimant won the case. The previous Government looked into the idea of implementing a fee-based system nearly ten years ago and the current Coalition is now considering the introduction of a fee of anywhere between £30 and £500 after figures showed a 56 per cent rise in claims over the past 12 months....

According to legally-obtained documents regarding the TV Licence-funded organisation, the BBC paid out £379,125 to settle cases regarding treatment or employee benefits brought forward by staff, while £203,627 plus VAT was spent on lawyer's fees. There was also an additional £24,386 plus VAT spent as a contribution to one claimant's legal costs, it was added. Overall, there were 33 employment claims lodged by disgruntled employees against the BBC last year. Of these, ....