In Tomlinson-Blake v Royal Mencap Society; Shannon v Rampersad and another (t/a Clifton House Residential Home), the Supreme Court dismissed both appeals and ruled that sleep-in care workers are entitled to be paid the national minimum wage only when they are awake for the purposes of working, not when they are sleeping.
While continuing to deal with the impact of coronavirus, HR professionals must ensure that their organisation complies with the usual raft of April employment law changes. In April 2021, these changes include the extension of IR35 reforms to the private sector, a tweak to the national minimum wage age bands, and increases to statutory redundancy pay and statutory maternity pay.
2020 was the year that HR was required to react to the unexpected, but it's now time to plan for the known challenges in the coming year. We look at what HR can do to prepare for 2021.
In Mears Homecare Ltd v Bradburn and others, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the duty to maintain national minimum wage records moves to the transferee on a TUPE transfer.
Consultant editor Darren Newman looks at a recent case in which the Court of Appeal ruled that a care worker required to sleep on the employer's premises was simply "available" for work rather than actually working, and therefore caught by the sleepover exemption in the minimum wage legislation.
In Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake; Shannon v Rampersad and another t/a Clifton House Residential Home, the Court of Appeal held that a "sleep-in" care worker in residential accommodation was not entitled to be paid the national minimum wage while asleep.