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Employment law brief: 16 April 2021

14 April 2021 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7928 / Categories: Features , Employment , Tribunals
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After a busy month for the Supreme Court, Ian Smith examines the implications for employment law & the impact on other cases in the pipeline
  • Sleep-in carers and the national minimum wage.
  • Common terms of employment in supermarket equal pay case.
  • Pimlico Plumbers claimant loses on time limitation.

We have had, in the last month, two Supreme Court judgments on important employment law topics, for which we have been waiting for some considerable time. The first regularises and simplifies the hitherto-complicated question of whether sleep-in carers can ever claim payment on the national minimum wage (NMW) scales for time asleep (answer: no). The second decides whether supermarket retail assistants in shops (female) can compare their pay with distribution workers in depots (male) for the purposes of an equal value claim (answer: yes). One thing they have in common is that both potentially involved many employers beyond the individual respondents and large amounts of money. The third case considered here was not in the Supreme Court, but followed on

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Russell-Cooke—Susanna Heley

Russell-Cooke—Susanna Heley

Legal director appointment bolsters public and regulatory team

Slater Heelis—five appointments

Slater Heelis—five appointments

Firm appoints training partner and four new trainees

Bolt Burdon Kemp—Natasha Orr

Bolt Burdon Kemp—Natasha Orr

Firm strengthens military claims team with senior associate hire

NEWS
Government plans for offender ‘restriction zones’ risk creating ‘digital cages’ that blur punishment with surveillance, warns Henrietta Ronson, partner at Corker Binning, in this week's issue of NLJ
Louise Uphill, senior associate at Moore Barlow LLP, dissects the faltering rollout of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 in this week's NLJ
Judgments are ‘worthless without enforcement’, says HHJ Karen Walden-Smith, senior circuit judge and chair of the Civil Justice Council’s enforcement working group. In this week's NLJ, she breaks down the CJC’s April 2025 report, which identified systemic flaws and proposed 39 reforms, from modernising procedures to protecting vulnerable debtors
Writing in NLJ this week, Katherine Harding and Charlotte Finley of Penningtons Manches Cooper examine Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26, the Supreme Court ruling that narrowed what counts as matrimonial property, and its potential impact upon claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975
In this week's NLJ, Dr Jon Robins, editor of The Justice Gap and lecturer at Brighton University, reports on a campaign to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler. 60 years after her perjury conviction, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt has petitioned the king to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, arguing she was a victim of violence and moral hypocrisy, not deceit. Supported by Felicity Gerry KC, the dossier brands the conviction 'the ultimate in slut-shaming'
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