A round up of the latest HR and Employment Law updates and related stories.
GP PRACTICES ARE FORCED TO CLOSE
It is clear that the role of practice manager is crucial in ensuring that practices are run effectively but there may be very difficult times ahead for all practice managers. As lawyers experienced with legal aid contracts, GPs are now being forced to close their practices primarily as a result of funding changes.
Dr Robert Morley, Birmingham LMC executive secretary has explained “we have small partnerships that are becoming unviable because of issues of recruitment, retention, impossible workload, GP illness and singlehanders retiring, and practices are also being closed by the CQC, while commercial APMS contracts are being terminated”.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, GPC Chair, suggests that “there are many practices on the brink of collapse, while others may not be closing, but are significantly reducing the level of services they can offer”.
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EMPLOYEE’S RIGHT TO A CHOICE OF COMPANION IN DISCIPLINARY MATTERS
Employees have a statutory right to be accompanied as disciplinary and grievance hearings by a trade union member or colleague. In addition, sometimes an employer’s own policy extends this right to any investigation process. Practice managers must ensure that employees are not denied this right by providing some flexibility in a choice of companion, particularly in unusual circumstances.
In the case of Stevens v University of Birmingham [2015] EWHC 2300 (QB) Professor Stevens (employed as Chair of Medicine) was the subject of allegations of misconduct which related to clinical trials he was overseeing.
The University’s own disciplinary procedure specified that Professor Stevens also had the right to be accompanied by a “staff member or trade union representative” at any investigatory meeting. Professor Stevens, a member of the medical defence organisation Medical Protection Society (MPS) requested that he be accompanied by one of their representatives and when the university refused, Professor Stevens made an application to the High Court for a declaration that he was entitled to be accompanied by an MPS representative.
The court found that whilst Professor Stevens did not have a contractual right to be accompanied by an MPS representative, the University, in refusing, had breached their employer’s implied term of trust and confidence. This implied term means that an employer should not do anything which would seriously damage the relationship of mutual trust and confidence without good and sufficient reason.
Although the circumstances of the case may be unusual, in that Professor Stevens
- was not a trade union member and
- there were good reasons why he should not be accompanied by a staff member
By not allowing some flexibility the University were effectively denying him any choice of companion.
Practices must now ensure that where:
- employees are not trade union members or
- circumstances are such that it would not be reasonable for a staff member/colleague to accompany the employee or
- employees may need external assistance from a professional body in complex situations
- there is a clear and transparent process (reflected in policies and in actions) to consider allowing an employee to be accompanied by someone falling outside the specified categories.
Otherwise, failing to do so is likely to breach the implied term of trust and confidence, as well as rendering any subsequent dismissal unfair.
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