New Employment Regulations

Newsletter issue - April 2010.

There are a host of new employment related regulations coming into force on 6 April 2010. This is a brief summary of those regulations that are likely to affect you or your business.

• Fit notes – these replace sick notes issued by GPs and will state what the worker can do, rather than what he or she is prevented from doing.
• Pension date - the date from which the individual can draw the state retirement pension will not necessarily fall exactly on a woman's 60th birthday. For example, a women who reaches age 60 between 6 April 2010 and 5 May 2010 will have a state pension date of 6 May 2010. This date also affects the payment of the employee's NI contributions.
• NI contribution years - individuals who reach state retirement age only have to accumulate 30 full years of NI contributions or credits to gain a full state pension.
• A single year of NI contributions will count towards the state pension. Until now a person had to accrue at least one quarter of their working life (about 11 years for a man, 10 for a woman) to be entitled to any state retirement pension. Each year of NI contributions will be worth roughly £3.20 of weekly pension at current rates. It will be essential to accurately record the NI number for every employee, so that each individual can collect their pension entitlement when they retire.
• Home responsibility protection credits (HRP) will be given on a weekly basis. This will allow the HRP credit to be combined with actual NI contributions to make up a full year of NI credits. HRP credits are given where a person stays at home to look after a child and claims child benefit.