i have a problem Long term employee wife has cancer

Hello, my name is ***** ***** it is my pleasure to assist you with your question today.

So to clarify it is his wife that is ill, he does not have any medical problems himself?

If he is not the one who is ill then you are not obliged to allow him time off from work, unless he was dealing with an emergency situation that required him to look after a dependent. He may request time off, paid or unpaid, but it is up to you to decide whether such time is granted. He could use up his holidays to take these days off but once these have all been allocated then he is really going to be relying on you to allow him extra time off, which as mentioned you do not have to do.

Had he been the one who is ill, then you would have had a duty to make reasonable adjustments, which could have included additional time off for appointments, treatment, etc. However, as he is taking the time off for someone else, that does not apply.

Also as mentioned he can take reasonable unpaid time off to deal with emergencies involving dependents but that does not mean routinely taking time off to look after someone who is already ill and when they know this time off is needed. This only applies if there is an unexpected event where he has to be off to deal with it, let’s say she has suddenly been taken into hospital and he has to go straight away to deal with this. It would not however cover general care for someone who is already ill and the issues he is taking time off are not unexpected.

you cannot force im to take unpaid leave but if he wants to take such leave then you can grant it. As to benefits that would depend on many factors that would be outside his employment as well, so he would have to get his situation formally assessed by the benefits office

is he the only team leader?

well if the repair does not work you can still ask for a replacement, although it would have to be your friend that does that from O2, rather than you as he is the original buyer

sorry wrong post

ignore the last sentence please

:) can you justify you would not need a team leader?

you could potentially seek to make his position redundant and try to claim that you would absorb these duties, making his job obsolete. You would have to pay him redundancy pay though and his notice period. Also if he believes that the reason for this was because of his wife's illness, then it could amount to disability discrimination by association. To be able to counter that you would need to show there was another justified reason for this, such as business needs, i'e' anything that is unrelated to his wife's position

it can be, but all of this relies on him actually pursuing the matter further - he would have to pay over £1k to make the claim and with his issues at home he may not have the time and resources to do so

redundancy is calculated here:

https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

if you were to do as proposed then he still has 3 months from the date of dismissal to challenge it if he believes it was unfair in some way

So you could still make him redundant as initially proposed and then wait for at least 3 months before you make any changes, after that you could actually get a replacement for him, like for like, and he would be too late to make a claim to challenge it

you are welcome

You have a few options:
a) If you see a 'share' button and hover over it you can see the option to print.
b) You could copy and paste this conversation into a Word document or equivalent. You can then save and/or print it and refer to it in the future as necessary.
c) This conversation will be stored in your account on this site so you may return to view it or do any of the above at any time