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A simple phrase like ‘subject to references’ may not protect employers as much as they think. Writing in NLJ this week, Ian Smith, barrister and emeritus professor of employment law at UEA, analyses recent employment cases showing how conditional job offers can still create binding contracts
In Kankanalapalli v Loesche Energy Systems Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that conditions attached to an offer were ‘subsequent’ rather than ‘precedent’, meaning a contract existed and had to be terminated with notice. Smith says the case is a warning that employers should ‘exercise care in how they phrase any conditions’.
He also reviews rulings on permanent health insurance, deductions of personal independence payments from compensation, and collective redundancy consultation duties.
The cases, he argues, show employment law returning briefly to ‘the relative sanity of some good old common/contract law concepts’.
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