With the economy slowly improving, temporary staffing agencies may need to contact staff for whom they have not provided work for some time. These staff, workers or employees will usually have been moved to the archive for old staff. Ava's recruitment software does not delete these entries: it hides them from day to day use. There are a number of simple to use ways to list and then contact these staff. The following linked article describes how.

• Contacting blocks of archive staff by date last worked.

Is it reasonable to dismiss an employee who had been at risk of redundancy for some time, just before they reached 50 and therefore acquired enhanced pension rights? This was precisely the case that was ruled upon in Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust.  The judgement went in favour of the NHS Trust. A succinct summary is available here:

Inner Temple library Blogg on Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust

A more turgid fuller account is here:

The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting on Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust [2012] EWCA Civ 330; [2012] WLR (D) 97

May be useful one day...

About the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting

On Friday we received notification that there was a significant vulnerability in one of the services we use on our web sites.

Microsoft recommended prompt application of two security updates. This required the web sites we host being stopped and re-started, a process taking about 5 minutes. This was done twice during the late part of Friday afternoon (after 4pm). It is unusual for Microsoft to be quite so urgent in their prompting. They believed that attacks using this vulnerability would be active within hours rather than weeks. We therefore thought it important to apply the fixes immediately.

We apologise if this inconvenienced your use of any of our sites.

These days having a website is expected for any Agency no matter how small. It can be very helpful. Contact details, terms and conditions and with the right software people can apply to work for you especially if they see brief descriptions of likely jobs that you have filled or need to fill. So how do you go about getting a website? Here…

The following article appeared in the Telegraph. It casts an interesting light on the general situation in respect of long term care.  Whist one in six people over the age of 80 suffers from dementia of some sort, the other 80% are poorly provided for when it comes to financial advice. The Telegraph alleges that information provided by local governement websites will often be wrong or misleading.

The Daily Telegraph article reviewing general and financial advice for the edlerly

Alzheimers

Bupa sponsored Telgraph article on long term and medium term care

Over the past month we have been subject to some concentrated hacking attacks. In some ways it's a compliment: we are seen as a worthwhile target. The attacks have been traced back to an ISP in the States. This does not mean that the hacking individual or organisation is US based, in the same way as "dot com" can be based anywhere in the world. We are completely satisfied that the attack went frustrated: the attacks were logged, no data was accessed and further or deeper penetration was blocked.

However in part to make sure no data was compromised, the web services were down for a time. This was typically from around midnight to early morning, so we apologise if you were an early worm trying to view our site. Statistically a limited number of visitors were affected as our legitimate visitors overwhelmingly keep UK office hours.

Over the years we have been attacked countless times, however this is the first time they have been of sufficient intensity to cause any disruption as opposed to simply being blocked and shrugged off.

It is our policy to be open about these events: so that you know if there isn't an entry in our blog then there hasnt been a problem. We now have in place measures to stop these attacks at an earlier stage and maintain the otherwise uninterrupted web presence we have provided over the last ten years.