Ensuring Compliance with Section 1 Employment Rights Act 1996

Our client came to us requesting that we review their contracts of employment, as well as their disciplinary and grievance policies.

Our first step was to conduct a Section 1 check to see whether their contracts of employment were compliant with the legislation. This requires that certain fundamental pieces of information be included within an employment contract and provided to an employee. We also reviewed their grievance and disciplinary policy to ensure that there were adequate policies in place.

Following these reviews, we arranged to meet with the client to advise upon the outcome of our review. In this case, the contracts were not compliant with their Section 1 requirements, so we took instructions accordingly in respect of those pieces of information which would need to be inserted, as well as instructions more generally on things they wanted to include.

In respect of the handbook, we advised on the areas we felt needed to be amended to more adequately protect the company, particularly in respect of confidentiality, criminal proceedings and covert recordings of meetings.

Following this meeting, we amended the contracts accordingly before sending them to the client for their initial review. We asked the client to review the same and provide us with any further instructions and their comments more generally. Following this, we were able to finalise the drafts.

We successfully updated the contracts, disciplinary and grievance policy to ensure that they were adequately protecting the employer, affording the employee their respective employment rights and, importantly, are now compliant with Section 1 Employment Rights Act 1996.

It is important to ensure that your contracts of employment are compliant and fit for purpose. From a practical perspective, when commencing a new employment relationship, it is vital that both parties understand their obligations and responsibilities from the outset, which should be set out within the employment contract.

For employers, it is of particular importance to ensure you are compliant, as a failure to provide a compliant Section 1 statement can result in an employee raising this as part of a substantive claim to an Employment Tribunal. Whilst a failure to provide this cannot result in a standalone claim, where a substantive claim has been brought (for example, unfair dismissal), the Tribunal can award additional compensation.