Below are some employment law provisions that are expected to come into force this year that might be of interest to health and safety practitioners. Links to the Equality Act are readily available via most of the big search engines if people want to have a more in-depth look: 4 April 2011 – Single Public Sector Equality Duty in force: Single public sector equality duty in force on 4 April covering race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy ,maternity and gender reassignment. Regulations are to be issued in April 2011 covering general and specific duties. Public bodies will have an extra year after that to publish equality objectives and whether they are being met. 6 April 2011 - Right to request flexible working extended: Parents of children under 18 years can ask to work flexibly if they have been continuously employed for at least 26 weeks. 1 October 2011 - Agency Workers Regulations 2010: From 1 October agency workers will have the right to the same working conditions as permanent staff, including pay, working hours and holidays once the worker has completed only 12 weeks in a job. No date yet: The Government is reported to be considering increasing the qualifying limit for unfair dismissal from one to two years. Regards. DJ

A bit of a heads up I guess, but perhaps one for the HR forums, although I doubt many in HR aren't already aware. The agency workers could be interesting though.

Bob raises a good question to which the answer is often overlooked amongst H & S practitioners. Failures to control some hazards at work - in particular those associated with stress and musculoskeletal disorders - can easily be interpreted by savvy lawyers as breaches of The Equality Act 2010. This is particularly the case with respect to 'personal charactertistics' of mental and physical disability but also those about sex and age. There is good economic incentive to do so as the tariff of awards for unlawful discrimiantion is far, far higher than those for breaches of health and safety regulations. Another thread on this forum this week about work-related stress drew in 20+ responses yet not even one mentioned the relevance of The Equality Act 2010.

This is important law and H&S people need to be up to date I was dismayed this very week on listening to a HR specialist [I am not getting at HR in particular -I am a x Personnel manager myself] but the info they gave out re this act was wrong - They said that U cannot ask certain Q? at the point of recruitment etc but in fact U can as its crazy and not logicial recruiting somebody to find out afterwards they will be harmed [mentally or physically] because of the role that they have been recruited into - reasonable adjustments or no reasonable adjustments I advise that H&S people get up to date with all law that is relevant to their work place otherwise U get left behind and whilst many are saying poor things about this law it is like any other law in the fact that H&S is seen as the primary concern and staff can be evaluated at the point of recruitment irrespective of what many say; as U cannot recruit etc somebody into an environment that is inherently unhealthy / unsafe for them where U know that they have a specific situation / condition - ignorance is no defence as if U do not know about a situation that is even worse! This is yet another area where HR will take the kudos and H&S professionals will be asked to work out a way of looking at H&S so as people can be kept in roles that are unsuitable for them My friend has one case at this time where numbers of 'day to day' staff are having their H-rights affected because management are not willing to tackle the matter with regards to one person - its a case of letting a whole barrel rot because the one apple is being left in place where by reasonable adjustments this one apple can be supported 'if management want to' In my opinion the principals behind this law are very good its just that we need to manage the law properly Keep on researching DJ and thanks