Leaving site on Lunch breaks

happyandcontented wrote: »

Would you not say that as there is nothing "specified" in law re whether you can/can't leave the premises then it comes down to "reasonableness"? Under the circumstances of the OP it would indeed be unreasonable for them to take the extra payment and then leave the premises when they are on first aid duty.

However, under normal circumstances when your lunch break is unpaid it would be entirely reasonable to do so and would be unreasonable of the employer to prevent you doing so unless it was a one-off occasion and for good reason.

If an employer could not give such a reason then I suspect a tribunal would find against them if they regularly insisted on an employee remaining on premises on their unpaid lunch break.

Reasonableness is not something that anyone can bet on. What I, or you, or the bloke down the road, think is reasonable is not what the law says or might determine. There are a lot of employers who do insist that lunch breaks are taken on the premises, and there always have been. Not the majority, but certainly enough. Some make it a contractual condition, and you accept it or there's no job. For some its policy - which can very easily, in law, become contractual anyway. Then there's custom and practice. But the fact is that such rules already exist in a number of places, and yet there is not a single piece of case law on this. On that basis I am not willing to tell anyone that they have a right to do something which there is no evidence or law to support. Perhaps others are comfortable with doing that, but I prefer to tell people facts and let them form their own opinions - not provide my opinion and let them think it's a fact.

Your comments are fair - but guesses based on supposition. A case would come down to specifics. And so far there isn't a case. Presumably because nobody is stupid enough to risk their job over where they eat their sandwich. Or maybe because, as in the OPs case, there's a patently reasonable explanation for the rule??? I believe, for example, that a number of people at Sellafield aren't allowed to leave the premises for lunch. Nuclear meltdown being so inconvenient to anyone living in the North of England and south of Scotland. On a more common circumstance, in the care industry, many care homes and facilities insist that all breaks are taken on the premises because, in legal terms, people leaving the site can reduce head count for staff to patient ratio below allowed levels on site.

So it's all down to specifics, and on some purely theoretical level with no specific information, and assuming a tribunal claim were made, I'm not willing to guess what the decision might be. But there is no right to leave the premises, just as there is actually no right to stay on the premises! Telling people they have rights which don't exist is not helpful. And assuming rights that don't exist is purely foolish...

None of which helps the OP at all, because they volunteered to be the first aider. They receive payment for the inconvenience of that. So they stay on the premises. Or give it up and surrender the payment. And maybe that might actually be best, because I'm not sure that I'd want to place my trust in the health and safety provision of a first aider, who, having agreed to provide this and taken the money, doesn't want to be there when I need it because it's inconvenient to them!

TELLIT01 wrote: »

Sangie has finally admitted that there is nothing in law to say staff may not leave the premises during their lunch break. That, presumably, because he couldn't find the non-existant piece of legislation which says that a company can stop people leaving the premises for unpaid breaks.
It would be perfectly reasonable to expect somebody who is being paid extra for First Aid duties to stay on site - they are being paid.

I have admitted no such thing. I have repeatedly referred to what the law and not opinion says. She had quoted exactly what the legislation says and linked to that legislation. You are all quoting opinion with no legal backing. I'm still waiting for the law that confirms your position. A law that does not exist.