Withdrawing a job offer

Unless of course their contract of employment provides otherwise (as I alluded in my previous post).

Alan - hope you're back to full health now Sir.

Sue, you learn something every day! Your friendly lawyer.

I am grateful for the comment above as I have been unable to get back to the discussion as I have been in court. Yes, anyone dismissed under one month's service is entitled to no notice. Your friendly lawyer.

Sue, Gareth,

The Employment Rights Act (1996) states that employee's who have been employed for more than one month are entitled to not less than one week's notice. it follows that employees with less than one month's service have no entitlement to a notice period. Beware though - as the friendly lawyer says above, this is only if the reason for dismissal is nondiscriminatory. This link might help:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/part/IX/crossheading/minimum-period-of-notice

Sale of goods act - if it don't work when you get it home or found to be not as described when unwrapped and/or fit for purpose or fails to function due to some flaw in manufactoring it can be rejected, within reasonable time, and ask for your money back and clearly this guy wasn't performing / presenting at all as led to expect by the advertising and wrapping !

I would appreciate more info also please

Would really like more clarity on the 28 day ruling please as I've been in HR for 17 years and never heard of it!
Sue

I had not heard of a 28 day rule - would you mind expaning please. Many thanks, Toni

Thank you Nigel, I hope the 28 day rule information was useful.

James and Alan - expertise and commonsense - thank goodness!!!

Wishing you good health, Alan.

Cheers Alan, although it was understood remuneration was not mentioned, discussed let alone agreed at the time of making the offer prior to the events that then caused the employer to reconsider their early positive impressions of the potential employee pre-start that lead to their enquiry whether or not they had paased the point of no immediate return......

Hope your feeling better soon after visit to hostipal........

* aspologies for spelling, just come out of hospital.

Nigel is wrong, an employment contract requires no consideration as the offer of future remuneration is apromise to pay and is therefore consdieration.

Any employee may be dismissed for a non-discriminatory reason within twenty eight days of commencing work.

Your friendly lawyer.

I can't believe the responses in this thread.

MY OPINION
This guy would have his offer withdrawn faster than you can say P45.

THE LEGAL SITUATION
Hopefully this offer was a conditional one. Even if it wasn't, you should write to him saying that the job is no longer available, and offer to pay him the minimum notice pay applicable (one week? - could well be zero weeks subject to wording).

Can't believe people are advocating getting this idiot on board to "see how he does". There are three million unemployed - lets get one of them in to see how they do instead.

To all of you thank you. The chap is starting work at the week end and is on probation for 3 months. (He passed the medical and induction). I did go ahead with the offer as it was easier to manage but his manager and I will keep a close check on him. Hopefully, he will start behaving appropriately!

Wow! I actually understood Niigel's post! ;-)

did you make him a conditional offer or unconditional offer? looks like you made him a conditional offer. When we offer jobs here we always offer a conditonal offer and advise those accepting that not to resign from their post until they have been given the unconditional offer, after various clearances etc. I would have a talk with him to find out what his issue are and they seem many if they include shifts, transport and accomodation and get a honest answer if he really wants the job.

Whas Nigel is on about is that "offer & acceptance" without "consideration" ain't no contract as if the "consideration" element is missing NO CONTRACT exists.

And in the case of previous relationship prior consideration is no consideration in any following agreement without all the elements of a contract in place...

There may even be a rational for proposing this individual didn't even make it to the start gate of their pobationary period and subject to a pre-start and/or induction meeting / review of their behaviours especially questioning their interpersonal communication skills where particularly their judgement and over familiararity could represent a significant risk of unprofessional or innappropriate attitudes toward others.

They may, of course, have simply yet completely misread your "friendly" announcement that they had initially been successful in their application and thought you were their newest best buddy and over enthusiastic or just a poor judge of appropriate behaviour and not sure which is scarier !!!

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Isn't this offer, acceptance and consideration?

If an offer is made and then accepted and some form of payment agreed then a contract exists, albeit a verbal one so to back out of that now would open you to a claim of breach of contract.

If the employee is already behaving in an inappropriate way they probably wont make it through the probation period.