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The Apprenticeship Levy, charged through PAYE on all employers with a wage bill over £3 million, has not lacked for critics with, as one example, the House of Lords Built Environment Committee recently reporting that the number of apprenticeship starts has fallen by over 25% since its introduction.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has announced new advisory fuel rates that can be used by employers paying employees a business mileage when driving an employer-provided car. These rates can also be used when charging employees for fuel provided for private miles and ordinary commuting.

Research carried out by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), of more than 1100 UK employers, has uncovered what it describes as a series of negative impacts from the recent increase in National Insurance (NIC) contributions.

The UK system for statutory sick pay (SSP) has been in place for 40 years, so is it still fit for the purpose it is intended to serve? Perhaps not, says employee benefits provider Unum UK, who, along with research by WPI Economics, have put forwards proposals for significant changes to the system.

A new study shows that the year ahead will see more than 20% of employers insisting on both new and existing staff being vaccinated against Covid-19.

Mainly spread by wild animals in parts of west or central Africa, and first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970, monkeypox has suddenly appeared in 14 countries with, for the first time, the virus being found in people with no clear connection to the usual countries of origin.

The amount of money that working parents are having to pay for childcare has returned to the headlines as the cost of living crisis deepens, and the Government has agreed that it is an area it wants to address.

While the most common response made in the past six months by employers with hard-to-fill vacancies has been to increase pay (44%), only 27% of organisations plan to raise wages in response to recruitment difficulties in the future.

Most employers (85%) have skills shortages in their workforce or expect to have shortages in the next five years, according to new research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which found that digital skills and problem solving skills are the main problem areas.

A review into how the Government can support a thriving future UK labour market has been ordered by the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Building on existing commitments already made in response to the Matthew Taylor Review (back in 2017), this review will seek to address how to “build back better” from the effects of not only Brexit but also the pandemic.