Employment law pitfalls

The alert has come from employment specialist Amanda Pillinger who believes dental practices across the country need to become ‘switched on’ to possible challenges they could face as small-scale employers.

The dental legal expert has reacted following her recent speech at a fringe event as part of the British Dental Trade Show where she spoke at length about HR issues. She came away from the event concerned the industry is not grasping the pace of employment law change.

Amanda, partner at Midland law firm MFG Solicitors, who specialise in dental matters, said: “Across the whole UK we have developing number of dental practices – and a substantial growth in the past five years. That’s a trend which is helping to support the economy but it also means the dental industry is a growing employer and therefore must be smarter on a host of developments.

“For example, high profile changes to the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims were brought in during spring 2012. The qualifying period is now doubled to two years and was designed to help small businesses, encourage them to recruit more staff and avoid around 2,000 tribunals every year.