Can you ask employees for evidence of the requirement to self-isolate under the Test and Trace scheme?
Yes, you can ask to see any information/documentation sent to an employee informing them that they should self-isolate.
Related FAQs
If you don’t want to make redundancies, or if you can’t reduce employee resource, either in a particular department or across the workforce as a whole, then you need to think about alternatives to redundancy.
Equally, you may want to flex the resource you have available to you – without making drastic changes. For example you may want to consider:
- unpaid leave and sabbaticals
- retraining and redeploying
- forcing annual leave
- flexible working
- capability issues
- lay off
- short time working
- reductions in salary
- reductions in working hours
- changing to shift working
Head of Commercial, Colin Hewitt, speaks with the team at NewcastleGateshead Initiative about the complexities of event cancellations and the associated legal implications.
Click here to listen to the full podcast.
Hosted by Advanced Manufacturing Forum, Partner, Matt Cormack discussed in this webinar how to avoid risks associated with your customer and supply chain contracts during this challenging Covid-19 period.
The webinar covers common questions such as:
- Can force majeure excuse me or my suppliers from paying on time?
- What are the risks to my business if I can’t perform on time due to Covid-19?
- What will happen to my contracts if the Government takes steps to require me to close down my facility?
To watch the full recording, please click here. (To note the recording begins at 10 minutes)
If you have any follow up questions, please do not hesitate to contact one of our lawyers detailed below or use our ‘ask us a question‘ feature.
Our advice to you here is simple. It will depend on the circumstances surrounding your debt but for the most part, unless it is crystal clear that there has been a debt outstanding long before Covid-19 and there was an inability to pay prior to the Covid situation we would recommend that you hold off issuing any further petitions until after the 31st December. Unless the criteria set out above is met, a judge is likely to exercise their discretion leniently and could dismiss the petition. This could also lead to cost consequences which would adversely affect you.
We are happy to discuss individual cases to assist creditors at this difficult time, however, generally any cases proceeding to petition would be the exception as opposed to the rule. Even if presenting a winding up petition is not available for now, there may still be other forms of legal proceedings that you can use to collect money owed to you, like county court proceedings.
As their employer, you have an overriding duty to provide a safe system of work. The Trust would not be able to run a defence to say that an employee “waived their rights” and chose to continue to work. Provided the decision around restricting duties has been carefully thought out, a full risk assessment undertaken and the employee has been truly consulted about the impact on them, then the decision taken will be a reasonable management instruction. Failing to follow that reasonable management instruction could amount to a disciplinary offence.