Ann Gloag, owner of Kinfauns Castle, Perthshire, has been successful in her action for Declarator that access rights do not apply to  the grounds of Kinfauns Castle. This landmark case was the first test of the Right to Roam legislation where the Ramblers sought to establish a right to roam, across the private grounds of Kinfauns Castle.

The Sheriff accepted that Mrs Gloag was entitled to reasonable measures of privacy and that her enjoyment of the house should not be unreasonably disturbed.  This was the first case of this type under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

Download and read recent press coverage:
The Times, 13th June 2007 - PDF, 744kb
Daily Express, 13th June 2007 - PDF, 348kb
The Daily Mail, 6th July 2007 - PDF, 332kb
The Daily Telegraph, 6th July - PDF, 88kb
The Perthshire Advertiser, 6th July - PDF, 304kb
The Sun, 6th July - PDF, 36kb
The Herald, 6th July - PDF, 296kb

Forcing lay magistrates to retire at 70 is wrong, according to one member of the Central and Southwest Staffordshire bench.

Richard Ellison has called for a European Commission investigation into whether the policy breaches age discrimination regulations as part of his campaign against it. However, the Commission has deferred its guidance pending the outcome of a case originating in Spain testing whether national compulsory retirement ages are compatible with EC law.

Mr Ellison said: “While discriminating against a person on age grounds is now illegal if they get paid, it would appear that it’s perfectly acceptable if they’re a volunteer. On the one hand, the Government says that volunteers are the backbone of the country; on the other, it excludes them from the Age Discrimination Act.”

A spokesperson for the Commission said: “Pending the clarification of the legal situation by the court, we cannot yet say whether the UK compulsory retirement age for magistrates is incompatible with EC law.”

Mr Ellison’s European champion, Philip Bradbourn MEP, described this statement as “typical of the Commission” and said that it did not “take us any further”. Meanwhile, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which want to see a more diverse body of magistrates given that the average age is over 50, confirmed that there were “no plans to change the retirement age”.

thelawyer.com, April 23, 2007

A new ‘super union’ of some 2 million UK workers has been formed this week following a merger of the Amicus and Transport and General Workers’ (T&GWU) unions.

The new union, ‘Unite’, marked its establishment with the launch of a major recruitment drive aimed particularly at younger workers, who, the union believes, are being “failed” by UK workplaces. Figures compiled by Unite indicate that just one in four younger workers is a member of a union.

The union’s membership will be drawn principally from the manufacturing, transport, finance, food and agriculture industries; the union, operating under the joint leadership of Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley with an annual organisational budget of around £ 15m, will also seek to maintain “a strong presence” in the public services and voluntary sectors.

“Two unions with a proud history but an even brighter future come together today to form one progressive, organising, fighting back industrial giant,” Mr Woodley commented today. “Unite will be focused above all on winning for our members in the workplace and taking trade unionism to the millions who need it.”

Mr Simpson, the former general secretary of Amicus, added: “Unite is uniquely placed to build an international trade union, capable of protecting working people of all ages from exploitation, whoever they work for.

“Since 2004 Amicus recruited a quarter of a million new members. We intend to build on this significantly in our new union, Unite. We aim to offer the benefits of membership of a strong and internationally connected union to working people in every workplace in the UK and Ireland.”

T&G press release, May 1, 2007

Small businesses that are struggling to meet the cost of employees’ maternity benefits should be offered financial aid from the Government, according to a coalition of business groups and the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC).

Since October 2006, pregnant workers have been eligible for paid maternity leave of up to nine months; statutory maternity pay stands at 90 per cent of average weekly pay for the first six weeks of leave and at 90 per cent of the average weekly wage or £112.75 a week, whichever is lower, thereafter.

In a joint letter to the Treasury, the EOC, British Chambers of Commerce, Institute of Directors and Federation of Small Businesses described the cost of maternity pay and maternity cover as “disproportionate”. The group is calling for financial assistance to be made available for “micro-employers” of fewer than ten employees and for free advice on maternity issues to be offered by the Government to companies that do not have their own Human Resources departments.

“Mismanaging pregnancy at work carries a heavy cost,” the letter states. “Employers lose up to £126m a year recruiting maternity cover, and around 30,000 women a year lose their jobs just because they are pregnant.

“Small employers usually have very little or no experience of managing pregnant staff, as the average small business has only one pregnant employee every 10 years. They can therefore easily fall foul of the law, resulting in costly and unnecessary tribunal cases. This is, of course, often due to the fact that small employers lack sufficient dedicated Human Resources support.”

Financial Times, May 7, 2007

The House of Lords has hammered an employer for writing an ill-advised letter to litigious employees. The Lords considered the letter to be so threatening that it amounted to unlawful victimisation.

The Court of Appeal, on the other hand, had found (by a majority) that it was an honest and reasonable response to the employees’ claim. The House of Lords’ unanimous April decision in St Helens MBC v Derbyshire and ors that the Court of Appeal was wrong is expected to cost the employer several hundred thousand pounds.

In the case some 500 hundred school dinner ladies had put forward equal pay claims. Settlement terms were agreed with the vast majority. However 36 of the ladies, clearly made of tough stuff, refused to settle and sued. Their employer then wrote each of them a long and careful letter explaining that if it was forced to pay more than the settlement amount agreed by the majority there would have to be job cuts and other cost savings which would adversely affect employees and school pupils generally. The 36 ladies hit back hard. They responded by lodging an additional claim. They said they were now being victimised because of bringing their original claim with the result that the employer now faced two claims instead of one. As noted above, the House of Lords has ruled in their favour that the letter did indeed amount to unlawful victimisation.

The law used by the dinner ladies in this case applies in all discrimination cases: sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, religious, and age. Therefore the message to employers generally, and especially to the considerable number of local authority employers currently facing equal pay claims (one of the reasons for this year’s Council Tax increases), is that they must exercise utmost caution in dealing with employees who are bringing discrimination claims. In that situation it is most important that expert legal advice, informed by careful study of the conflicting judgments of the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal in the case noted above, should be taken.

www.emplaw.co.uk, May 1, 2007

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has published a new report which it says reveals the true extent of flexible working provision in the UK.

‘Work and Life: How business is striking the right balance’ claims to turn on its head the notion that business has to be forced to be flexible through regulation.

Key findings include:

• 89 per cent of the businesses surveyed provide their employees with some form of flexible working;
• 72 per cent offer part-time working, 69 per cent offer variable working hours and 38 per cent offer working from home;
• 71 per cent of employers believe that there has been either some or a significant improvement in employee relations as a result of offering flexible working;
• 60 per cent of employers reported some or a significant improvement in staff retention;
• 58 per cent of employers reported some or a significant improvement in productivity.

The BCC claims that the reason politicians are so keen to regulate in this area is because firms are “poor at celebrating their achievements”. As many as 84 per cent of respondents to the study do not have a formal written ‘work-life balance’ policy, which the BCC says contributes to the “perception gap between what employers are actually doing and what politicians assume they are doing”.

Of those employers who did not offer flexible working:

• 56 per cent highlighted the difficulty in achieving business growth with a reorganised workload and resources;
• 32 per cent cited a desire to be fair to all employees;
• 21 per cent cited the administrative burden of new policies.

“The debate now needs to shift away from what employers are not doing, to focus on what they are and try to identify the real barriers to greater flexibility,” said Sally Low, director of policy and external affairs at the BCC.

“Those who aren’t providing flexibility for their staff lack the management confidence to restructure the way they manage their staff–only advice and support will rectify this while further regulation will impose a needless and onerous burden”.

British Chambers of Commerce, Press release, April 23, 2007

A firm that promoted a long hours culture has been found liable for a road accident which left an employee paralysed.

Michael Eyres, who was thrown from his van after falling asleep at the wheel, can now sue the Bradford-based company, Atkinsons Kitchens and Bedrooms, for damages expected to top £1 million. The final reward will be reduced by a third as Mr Eyres was not wearing a seat belt and knew he was at risk of falling asleep. But the appeal court judge ruled that he was “in that predicament because his employers had put him there”. The company director, Craig Atkinson, was also asleep in the van at the time of the accident.

Lord Justice Ward said: “Mr Atkinson’s saying ‘eating’s cheating’ and ‘you can sleep when you’re dead’ summed up the company’s philosophy.”

Daily Telegraph, April 25, 2007

Sexism in the City is in the spotlight again as an employment tribunal begins hearing the case of bank trader, Katharina Tofeji, who claims she was forced to quit her job after taking maternity leave.

Ms Tofeji, a former employee of BNP Paribas, is suing the bank alleging sexual discrimination, unfair dismissal and breaches of maternity and flexible working conditions.

The case centres on the bank’s alleged refusal to grant Ms Tofeji a four day working week after she returned from one year’s maternity leave that started in May 2005. But she also argues that her case represents years of grievances concerning the bank’s treatment of women.

In her witness statement she said: “There was a sexist culture at the bank and there were many other times when I had to experience discrimination at work, including comments that I had to listen to and smile because I felt helpless.”

She argues that it was after she announced in late 2004 her intention to take six months’ maternity leave that she began to be treated unfairly, she believes this resulted in a reduced bonus for 2004. When she split up with her partner, she was forced to extend maternity leave and then find a nursery to take her daughter to for four days a week. She contends that her male superiors resisted her request for a four day working week, saying only a five day week would suffice. She further claims her superiors passively encouraged her to resign.

It is believed that Ms Tofeji is seeking between £1 million and £2 million for past and future loss of earnings. The hearing continues.

Financial Times and Guardian, April 17, 2007

Employers at Warwick University acted in breach of race discrimination legislation in failing to select Irish academic Patricia Walls for a research post in 2005, an employment tribunal has ruled.

The post for which Dr Walls applied involved research into the provision of healthcare for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, in particular those from Afro-Caribbean and south-east Asian communities. At her interview, Dr Walls told the four-strong interview panel that she believed the research would be stronger if it also covered Irish and Chinese communities; the employment tribunal subsequently found that the panel’s decision to appoint a less well-qualified applicant to the post had been made on the assumption that Dr Walls would only be interested in the project if it involved the Irish community, and that such an assumption would not have been made had Dr Walls not herself been Irish.

The tribunal also established that the appointment had been made on the basis of interview performance, rather than assessment of the advertised criteria, and that, of the four interviewers, two had “never read” the university’s equality and recruitment policies.

Warwick University was ordered by the tribunal to pay £35,000 in compensation to Dr Walls. The university has signalled its intention to appeal against the verdict.

Guardian, April 23, 2007

Employees who do not normally work on Mondays are not entitled to time off in lieu of public holidays, law firm DWF has assured employers.

As the first in a series of summer bank holidays approaches, many employers will be faced with requests from part-time staff for days off in lieu. However, DWF has stressed that firms are within their rights to refuse such requests from employees if Monday is not usually a working day for them.

The advice follows a decision by the Court of Session in a case brought by an employee under the Part Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations which, as the name suggests, were designed to ensure that part-timers enjoy the same privileges as full-time staff.

Kirsty Rogers, partner with DWF, said: “The man concerned worked from Wednesday to Friday and was not allowed time off in lieu for public holidays though his colleagues who worked on Mondays got the day off.

“The court was asked to decide whether he was treated less favourably because he was a part-time worker. It concluded that the employer had not distinguished between part and full-time workers, but rather between those who worked Mondays and those who did not.

“While this case will rankle with many part-time workers, it could mean a considerable saving on holiday pay for some employers.”

DWF press release, April 23, 2007

An agreement to tackle sexual harassment among staff in the prison service in England and Wales has been signed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC).

The EOC wants to address its key concerns, which include:

• the thirteen complaints of sexual harassment that were made between 2001-2005 to the EOC’s helpline directly by prison staff;
• the five employment tribunal cases that the Prison Service lost in the years between 2002-04;
• information provided by the Prison Service regarding internal complaints of sexual harassment, which raised concerns about the way in which complaints were managed, investigated and reported.

The agreement between the EOC and the Prison Service includes work to implement significant cultural and organisational change and the introduction of a revised complaints and discipline procedure with an associated training package for managers and of a new IT system, which will greatly improve the Prison Service’s ability to capture and analyse staff complaints and grievances.

Jenny Watson, the chair of the EOC, said: “Sexual harassment, wherever it occurs, is an extremely serious issue, which harms individuals and damages the operational effectiveness of many organisations. Strong leadership is crucial to addressing sexual harassment.”

Phil Wheatley, the director general of the Prison Service, added: “This agreement demonstrates part of our commitment to effectively prevent and tackle any form of harassment, bullying or discrimination in the Prison Service. I have just published a new staff diversity and equality scheme which sets out our ambitions for ensuring fairness, dignity and decency at work. This agreement forms an important part of this work.”

Equal Opportunities Commission, Press release, April, 2007