Recent legislation

Employers’ liability

The Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires employers to take out liability insurance against the risk of injury to employees. The Act, along with the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998 (SI 1998 No 2573), excludes various categories of employers from the legislation, and also removes protection from certain classes of employees. The 1998 Regulations have been the subject of amendment, by the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 (SI 2004 No 2882), which came into force on 28 February 2005. A further exclusion has been inserted, in respect of: ‘Any employer which is a company that has only one employee and that employee also owns fifty percent or more of the issued share capital in that company.’ The Government’s explanatory notes indicate that the purpose of the amendment is ‘to create a level playing field between the self-employed who have no employees and companies that employ only their owner’. Under the original version of the Regulations, insurance was required by the latter but not the former. The different forms of business organisation which may be adopted by a sole trader are thus treated in the same way.