We round up of some of the key employment law changes taking place in 2021 and how they affect your business, from Brexit and wages to redundancy and IR35.
1. The EU Court of Justice has issued a decision on collective redundancy consultations. Collective consultation rules must be followed if an employer plans 20 or more redundancies at the same workplace within 90 days. The Court has recently held this is based on 90 rolling days and so you need to look forwards and backwards to work out if you are proposing to make 20 or more redundancies in a 90-day period.
2. Not only are the National Minimum Wage rates increasing from 1 April 2021, but the age that workers become entitled to the National Living Wage is also changing. This means that individuals aged 23 and over (as opposed to 25 and over, as it is currently) are entitled to £8.91 per hour and if they work a 40-hour working week, this means a salary of £18,532.80.
3. From 30 June 2021, EU job applicants will need to provide proof of a visa or residential status under the EU Settlement Scheme. If you have not done this already, you should review your workforce and prepare to change right to work checks.
4. You may recall that the Government delayed the extension of off-payroll working rules (known as “IR35”) from April 2020 to April 2021 due to Covid. It looks like this change will go ahead in April 2021. This legislation impacts medium and large businesses with turnover of more than £10 million and more than 50 employees, who engage self-employed contractors. If this applies, then the business will be responsible for determining employment status and deducting tax and NI if appropriate. Regardless of whether or not it applies it is worth reviewing the status of any self-employed staff you have to ensure they will not be assessed as employees or workers later.
