It’s nearly Easter, a time for relaxing, refreshing and celebrating with family. To help you avoid falling foul of the law this spring, we’ve set out some Easter-themed tips below.
1. Don’t make customers hunt for your terms and conditions
Your terms and conditions must be clear to customers whenever they purchase a product or sign up for a service. Don’t hide important terms in the fine print, and make your terms and conditions easily accessible. Our template Terms and conditions include the legal minimum returns and cancellation policies as well as other terms and conditions to help you maintain good customer relationships. For more guidance about terms and conditions when selling online, see our Q&A.
2. If you’re advertising chocolate or other food products, be aware of the rules around advertising foods high in fat, sugar or salt
Although everyone loves indulging over the Easter break, there are specific rules that apply to advertising food and food products. You must not encourage excessive consumption of food, and there are certain rules around the placement and promotion of high fat, salty, and sugary food. See our Q&A for further guidance.
3. Giving staff time off over Easter
Most businesses close down over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, but if your business keeps running, you’ll need to make sure you know how to deal with your staff leave and pay. There’s no statutory right for your staff to take time off or get paid extra for working on a bank holiday; whether they’re entitled to time off and/or any extra pay will depend on the terms of their employment contract (and potentially whether you have created a standard practice in your business of giving time off and/or providing extra pay).
If an employee refuses to attend work when they are contractually required to, you can treat this as a disciplinary issue. Use our staff handbook to make sure you have an appropriate disciplinary policy in place.
If you use irregular or zero-hours workers, be aware that the rules for calculating their holiday pay and leave are changing for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. Find out more in our recent blog.
4. New birth in the family for one of your staff members? Check out our updated Paternity toolkit
The rules around paternity leave have recently changed, giving staff more flexibility to take their paternity leave. For children whose expected week of childbirth is after 6 April 2024, or children being adopted on or after 6 April 2024, fathers and eligible partners will be able to take their leave in two one-week blocks at any time during the 12 months after the birth or adoption of their child. The notice period required has also been reduced. We’ve updated our Paternity toolkit to reflect these new changes.
5. Spring time is a good opportunity to review and refresh your privacy and cookies notices
Even if you have a privacy policy and cookie policy in place, it’s a good idea to regularly review and refresh them. Your business practices or the way you collect and use personal data or cookies may have changed over time, and you need to ensure your policies are up to date. You can use our Cookie policy and Privacy policy to ensure your policies are legally compliant.
6. Want to celebrate with some Easter-themed branding? Make sure you don’t infringe anyone’s trademarks or copyright
Whenever you’re creating promotional material, advertisements or branding it’s very important that you avoid infringing anybody else’s intellectual property. If you infringe somebody else’s IP, that person could sue you or force you to stop using your branding. This could result in additional expense and may affect your business’s reputation and goodwill. Our Q&A includes more information on how to check whether you’re infringing on someone’s IP, and our Protecting IP and confidential information toolkit helps you protect your own IP.
The content in this article is up to date at the date of publishing. The information provided is intended only for information purposes, and is not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Sparqa Legal’s Terms of Use apply.
Marion joined Sparqa Legal as a Senior Legal Editor in 2018. She previously worked as a corporate/commercial lawyer for five years at one of New Zealand’s leading law firms, Kensington Swan (now Dentons Kensington Swan), and as an in-house legal consultant for a UK tech company. Marion regularly writes for Sparqa’s blog, contributing across its commercial, IP and health and safety law content.