News
Collective Redundancy Consultation Changes
23rd April 2013The provisions of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment) Order 20...
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Legal Aid Changes
23rd April 2013The well publicised changes to the legal aid system are now in effect. These changes mean that legal...
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Meet the Team
Sally Kiddle Morris
Sally Kiddle Morris is a partner in the firm. She joined the firm in 1983 having completed her training to become a solicitor at Westhorpe Ward and Catchpole.
News
Collective Redundancy Consultation Changes
23rd April 2013The provisions of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment) Order 2013, is now in force and this makes changes to the rules relating to collective redundancy consultation. The changes came into effect on 6 April 2013. Where an employer is proposing to dismiss as redundant 100 or more employees at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less, the 90-day minimum consultation period necessary before the first dismissal takes effect is reduced to 45 days. W...
Legal Aid Changes
23rd April 2013The well publicised changes to the legal aid system are now in effect. These changes mean that legal aid has been removed from entire areas of civil law, including most family cases. The changes were deemed necessary by government that wanted to reduce the legal aid bill. The reforms are made under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo). Areas which will no longer qualify for funding include family cases where couples are divorcing and sorting out living arra...
Government Announces Flexible Working Measures
11th February 2013Following the 'Modern Workplaces' consultation in 2011, the Government plans to introduce the following reforms: Shared Parental Leave after Birth or Adoption From 2015, parents will be given the right to share up to a year's leave after the birth or adoption of a child. Employed mothers will still be entitled to 52 weeks' maternity leave and will have to take at least the first two weeks (four weeks if they are manual workers) of leave after birth as a recovery period. F...
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Who Owns the Email?
17th January 2013If a member of staff uses your computer system to exchange emails, does the content of the email become the property of your business? This question was addressed recently in a court case concerning a dispute that arose between a shipping company and its former chief executive. The company had gone to court to obtain an order to prevent the executive from deleting emails he had received, which it wished to access in order to investigate alleged accounting irregularities and in order to look i...
Family Law Guide
2nd January 2013Relationships can seem indestructible when they begin. The excitement and the feeling of being in love can make it seem pointless or disloyal to raise the question, 'what do we do if it all goes wrong?' With high divorce rates and ever-increasing numbers of people cohabiting (cohabitants have limited rights), it is common sense for people to consider what their position would be should a relationship end. In some circumstances, if you wait to see what happens, it may be too late to ...
Assignment of Lease Alone Not a TUPE Transfer
5th December 2012The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled (Lom Management Ltd. v Sweeney) that although the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) may apply when the lease of a commercial property has been assigned, this will only be the case if, on the facts, a business has also been transferred which is intrinsically linked to the property and satisfies the definition of 'economic entity' within the meaning of TUPE Regulation 3(2) ' i.e. an organised gr...
HVA ready for Will Aid
5th November 2012We are delighted to announce that we will be supporting Will Aid this month and writing free wills! Having your Will written professionally can give you great peace of mind. In signing up to support the Will Aid campaign it means that we can write your will and instead of paying legal fees you are invited to make a donation to charity based on the minimum donations suggested by Will Aid which are £90 for a basic Will, £135 for a pair of basic mirror Wills and £40 for a codicil. If you dona...
We wore it pink!
5th November 2012Following the National Wear it Pink Day held on Friday 26th October 2012, we are delighted to report that we managed to raise £717.40 in support of the Breast Cancer Campaign. Our staff wore pink t-shirts in support of the campaign, and had a number of sponsored events such as a sponsored cyclo-thon which was a huge success. We managed to collectively pedal our way to 224 miles during the course of the day, for some it was the first form of exercise undertaken in a long time so it was no me...
Wear it Pink
24th October 2012We are delighted to be taking part in the National 'Wear it Pink Day' to be held on Friday 26th October 2012. The campaign is in aid of the charity Breast Cancer Campaign. On the 26th October, staff at HV&A will adorn pink t-shirts in support of the campaign, they will also be raising funds for the campaign through fun activities such as a sponsored cyclo-thon. The firm's marketing Partner, Sarb Gosal states: "This was an idea which was put forward by our staf...
How to Establish Adverse Possession of Land
19th October 2012Many people are aware that it is possible for an unauthorised occupier of unregistered land owned by another person to gain ownership of it if the occupier is able to show 'adverse possession' of the land for 12 years. A recent Court of Appeal case sheds light on what is required to establish adverse possession in these circumstances. Greenmanor Ltd. was the legal owner of the land being fought over in this case. The land was to the south of 125 North Lane, East Preston, a mixed- us...
Confidential Document Leak Lands Executive in Court
26th September 2012An executive has been found in breach of his contract of employment with his former employer after he leaked a confidential report during a luncheon appointment with a business contact. Shortly after leaving his senior position to take up a new post with a rival company, he disclosed the confidential document to a business contact who was connected with his new employer. When the leak was discovered by his former employer, it commenced court proceedings against him. In the High Court, J...
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Council Not Liable for Tree Roots Subsidence
26th September 2012A property owner whose Victorian townhouse was severely affected by subsidence has failed to convince the Court of Appeal that the local authority and a housing association (the respondents) should be held liable to compensate her for the damage. The woman had commissioned various repair works after noticing cracks in the bricks and walls of her property and issued proceedings against the respondents, alleging that the encroachment onto her land of the roots of two large plane trees situated ...
Pensions and auto enrolment
7th September 2012The government have responded to the consultation which began on 19 July 2011 and ended on 11 October 2011. Employers will need to: • Automatically enrol certain eligible workers into a pension scheme • Make contributions on their workers behalf • Register with The Pensions Regulator (the regulator) • Provide workers with certain information about the changes and how they will affect them. Changes will begin to take effect from October 2012 but protection is in p...
Squatting finally becomes illegal
24th August 2012From the beginning of next month, squatting will become a criminal offence. Home owners, and particularly landlords whose properties are not always occupied, will surely welcome this news. Recent figures suggested that the act of squatting was on the increase. Until now anyone guilty of squatting was not actually guilty of a criminal offence, although squatting has always been a civil offence. All of that though is about to change when on the First of September 2012 it will be made a criminal...
New Minimum Wage Rates
12th August 2012The Government has announced that it has accepted the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission on the rates for the National Minimum Wage (NMW) that will apply from 1 October 2012. The rates are as follows: The adult hourly rate of the NMW will increase from £6.08 to £6.19; The development rate (which covers workers aged 18-20 years) will remain at £4.98; and The rate for workers aged 16 and 17 will remain at £3.68. The apprentice rate, for apprentices under 19 or those aged ...
Government announces employment tribunal fee levels
27th July 2012Presently cases presented to the Employment Tribunal do not attract any fees on issuing an application unlike civil law cases before the courts. However all that is about to change. The Ministry of Justice has published its response to the consultation on charging fees to bring and continue claims in the employment tribunal. The response sets out the Government's intention to introduce such fees in the latter half of 2013. Fees will be charged in two stages, the first at the issue o...
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Are You Self-Employed? Revised Guidance for Service Companies
6th July 2012HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have published new guidance intended to help personal service companies determine their correct employment status. HMRC will take a risk-based approach to consider how likely it is that they need to check whether IR35 applies to your individual circumstances. To gauge this, they will look at how your business works and assess which of three risk bands is appropriate as low, medium or high risk. Low risk means that the likelihood that HMRC will check whether IR35 ...
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Family Law Arbitration
3rd July 2012David Rose has qualified as a Family Law Arbitrator, one of the first 50 Lawyers in England and Wales to do so. The Scheme for Family Law Arbitration has been developed recently to enable parties to resolve financial disputes more quickly, cheaply, flexibly and informally. The Scheme covers financial disputes on the breakdown of marriage or civil partnership, child maintenance, inheritance claims and disputes about ownership between cohabiting couples. David says "Arbitration ...
New Cookie Law
27th June 2012The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 require consent to be obtained for the use of cookies and similar technologies for storing information, and accessing information stored, on a user(TM)s equipment, such as their computer or mobile phone. The Regulations came into force on 25 May 2011. However, the Information Commissioner (TM)s Office (ICO) announced that organisations would be allowed a year-long period to work towards compliance with the chan...
Buying your council home - the Right to Buy scheme
22nd June 2012From April 2012 the discount offered for Council tenants under right to buy schemes increased to £75,000.00. The Right to Buy scheme is designed to help social tenants in England to buy their council home at a discounted rate. You can apply for Right to Buy if you have been a council or public sector tenant for five years (and it does not matter if it was not five years in a row). You will qualify as a public sector tenant if you have lived in properties provided by a housing associati...
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