Following its announcement on proposed employment law reforms, the Government has now published its response to the 2020 consultation on non-compete clauses providing some more details on its intention to introduce a statutory three-month limit to non-compete clauses in employment contracts.
- the proposed three-month limit will apply to non-compete clauses only, it will not apply to other types of restrictive covenants such as non-solicitation or non-dealing clauses;
- the proposed limit will only apply to employment contracts and limb (b) workers' contracts. It will not extend to wider workplace contracts such as partnership agreements, LLP agreements and shareholder agreements;
- the Government intends that common law principles will still apply to non-compete clauses of three months or less. The starting point for restrictive covenants is that they are unenforceable unless they are reasonable and go no further than necessary to protect legitimate business interests;
- there is still no mention of when draft legislation will be published or whether or how the statutory limit would apply retrospectively to existing contracts.
The Government has now published a consultation on reforms to the Working Time Regulations, holiday pay and TUPE which closes on 7 July 2023. The proposals include:
- removing any legal requirement for businesses to keep a record of the daily working hours of their workers. The Government is seeking evidence from employers on recording working hours;
- creating a single annual leave entitlement of 5.6 weeks' leave (rather than the current 4 weeks' EU leave and 1.6 weeks' domestic leave). The overall statutory entitlement would not change and employers would still be able to choose whether or not to include bank holidays in the statutory entitlement;
- inviting views on clarifying the minimum rate of holiday pay and what counts as "normal remuneration";
- a new method for calculating holiday entitlement for workers in their first year of work together with revised guidance to provide clarity for employers;
- allowing rolled up holiday pay to be paid at 12.07% of a worker's pay on each payslip for workers with regular and irregular hours;
- allowing employers to consult directly with employees where there are no employee representatives in place in a TUPE transfer in situations where either there are fewer than 50 employees in the business or where the transfer affects fewer than 10 employees whatever the size of the business.
Following the Government's announcement that it will replace the sunset clause in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill with a list of retained EU law it intends to revoke by 31 December 2023, it has now published the new revocation Schedule which includes 587 pieces of legislation.
