2022 is set to be another unpredictable year for UK employment law as COVID-19 measures continue. In this article, employment partner Emma Clark and trainee solicitor Imogen Dale outline the most important updates to employment law to look out for, along with their predictions of changes for the year ahead.

April dates for your diary

• The National Living Wage will increase on 1 April 2022 to 9.50.
• Statutory family leave payments – the rate of statutory maternity pay, paternity pay, adoption pay, shared parental leave and parental bereavement pay increases to 156.66 per week from 3 April 2022.
• The financial award for compensation for unfair dismissal (currently 89,493 or 52 weeks’ salary, whichever is lower) has not yet been announced, but is due to increase in April.
• Statutory sick pay will increase from 96.35 to 99.35.

The Employment Bill

The Employment Bill, containing a wide-ranging suite of rights for workers, was initially announced in the Queen’s Speech in 2019. Its progress through Parliament was put on hold during the pandemic. It is likely to be published in 2022, though no deadlines have yet been announced.

The current proposals to be set out in the Bill include:

• Unpaid carer’s leave of 1 week (to be taken as a block or in individual days);
• Changes to flexible working rights – possibly the right to request (but not necessarily be awarded) flexible working from day 1 of employment and changes to the eight business grounds for rejecting such request;
• Extension...

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