Tag: Recruitment

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Anna Denton-Jones Confidentiality Disclosure Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Recruitment Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 Right to Work

Reform to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974

View of the British Houses of Parliament from the river Thames, where the Employment Rights Bill is being debated

On 28 October 2023, the 1974 legislation was amended by the Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and accompanying Regulations.

In the past, some offenders were required to disclose their sentences for the rest of their lives. Now, custodial sentences of 4 years or less and of more than 4 years for some less serious crimes, will be spent “after a period of rehabilitation” of up to 7 years after the sentence has been served, provided that no further offence is committed in that period.

PenaltyPrevious Rehabilitation PeriodNew Rehabilitation Period
Community Order1 year beginning with the last day on which the order had effectNow it is the last day on which the order had effect
Custody of 6 months or less 2 years 
Custody up to 1 year 1 year
Custody of 6  months up to 30 months4 years 
Custody of more than 1 year up to 4 years 4 years
Custody of more than 30 months up to 4 years7 years 
Custodial sentences of more than four yearsNever spent7 years
Convictions for serious sexual, violent or terrorist offencesNever spentNever spent

Stricter disclosure rules continue to apply to jobs that involve working with vulnerable people.

The time frames that I have detailed are in relation to offenders who are over the age of 18. Slightly lower periods apply if the offender was under 18 at the time of conviction.

The new time periods are extended in the event of re-offending during the declaration period. A new conviction attracts its own disclosure period and the previous conviction and the new one need to be declared until the end of the original conviction’s active period or if later, the end of the new disclosure period applied to the more recent conviction.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

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Anna Denton-Jones Disability Discrimination Law Diversity Duty of Care Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Offer of Employment Reasonable Adjustments Recruitment

Employers making reasonable adjustments in recruitment

View of the City of London at sunset

An applicant for a job who had dyspraxia asked to make an oral job application instead of filling the online form that the employer required. The employer emailed him with repeated requests asking him to explain what his difficulty was with the online process. The individual had difficulty with written communication, indeed that was the reason behind his request in the first place, so he also struggled to deal with these emails. The employer ought to have realised this as they knew about the dyspraxia. The Tribunal ruled that a reasonable employer would have phoned the applicant in order to understand their situation more fully.

A factual quirk of this case is that the applicant was seeking to return to the same team, with the job applications being judged by the same line manager who had dismissed him 8 months previously (failed probation). Understandably, that may have been behind the employer’s reluctance to engage with the individual but what you don’t get to know is to what extent they knew about the dyspraxia during the probationary period and what reasonable adjustments were made at that stage to assist the individual in order to level the playing field and put them into a position where they might have been able to pass the probationary period.

This case illustrates the importance of making reasonable adjustments not only for your own employees such as probationers but for all job applicants. It also illustrates how sometimes the reasonable adjustment is something very cheap and easy to do (a phone call instead of an email) and how as soon as the employer has knowledge there is a disability they should be making adjustments not waiting for the employee to ask.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

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Anna Denton-Jones Communication Employment Contract Employment Law HR Offer of Employment Recruitment Video

Video | Offers vs contracts

Legal contract papers

Our latest video is available to view on the Refreshing Law YouTube channel — please click here to watch Anna discussing a case she read about recently which relates to an issue that she does see cropping up from time to time around what has been offered at interview and in the initial offer letter versus what is in the contractual documentation later on.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

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Anna Denton-Jones Employment Contract Employment Law Fraud HR Offer of Employment Recruitment

The implications of falsehoods in CVs

Royal Courts of Justice, London

A Court decision caught my eye when I was reading the legal news. Firstly, the case is interesting because it went all the way to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. Secondly, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal. Thirdly, the former employee had been ordered to pay back £97,000 having falsely claimed, in a job application, that he held qualifications and relevant work experience that he did not in fact have.

The case involved somebody called Jon Andrewes who had worked as the Chief Executive of St Margaret’s Hospice in Taunton. He claimed he had a university degree, relevant work experience and even a PhD from Plymouth University, insisting on being called Dr.

There was nothing wrong with his performance in the job, indeed the fact that he worked from 2004 to 2015 and was regularly appraised as either a strong performer or outstanding performer shows that he had not aroused suspicion at an early stage. He had also used similar lies to be appointed to roles as a Director and then Chair of the Torbay NHS Care Trust and as Chair of the Royal Cornwall NHS Hospital Trust.

At some point he was obviously caught out and the whole deck of cards came crashing down.

In 2017 he pleaded guilty to obtaining pecuniary advance by deception and two counts of fraud and was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. The Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002 sets out a confiscation regime whereby criminals are relieved of their ill-gotten gains. In this case, the Crown were seeking an order that his entire earnings during the period of employment under false pretences should be confiscated. This would have been £643,000 (net earnings).

The Court of Appeal had held that it would be disproportionate to expect him to pay something back.

The Supreme Court sought a middle way and ordered he pay £97,000. There was clearly a feeling that to deprive a person of their entire earnings when the employee had apparently done a good job, would be a step too far but they also declined to agree with the employee’s submission that a ‘take nothing’ approach was appropriate. Despite the fact that he had done a good job, the Hospice and two Trusts had sought a person of honesty and integrity and would have chosen another candidate if they had known about the deception.

In carving this middle route, the Supreme Court was clearly trying to represent the difference between the earnings made as a result of the CV fraud and a lower amount of earnings that the defendant would have made had they not committed the fraud.

The same principles will apply whatever the seniority of the employee.

One of the key issues arising in the case is what background checks were done to verify qualifications and information given on the CV. Just because somebody is in a very senior position, all the status doesn’t mean we should not subject them to checks that we might make for more lowly employees. I am not sure how the deception was identified in the end but it does seem that at least 3 HR Departments have some egg on their faces?

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law