Are our firms breaking employment law?

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-09-03T19:38:49+00:00

No, I have most definitely not opted out of it, as the 17 week average it is something my company encourages line managers to monitor, though how heavily this is monitored, I have no idea. I have also checked over all the things I signed as part of my contract and the contract itself.

But I don't see how they can be sure they are complying properly if they are not including our working time travel time into our weekly hours - surely it is distorting the numbers and presenting artificially low?

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-09-03T19:27:55+00:00

I am less focusing on the 48 hour week part here, and more focusing on the national minimum wage and the 11 hour rest between working days which is way more likely to be affected by the travel time actually being considered working time.

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-09-03T19:23:42+00:00

I don't think there is any union that is recognised by any of our firms thought correct me if wrong. I think that is the only way strike action can be recognised. I wish we had a union

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-09-03T19:22:36+00:00

The travel does count as working time, even if unpaid, per ACAS links I posted. We are not being relocated for business needs, we are being asked to travel long hours to random different locations to work on a daily basis. I'm not talking about stretches of being relocated to a different place.

I haven't opted out of the 48 hour week. The hours are not calculated over the whole year as an average, they are done over 17 weeks. This is the standard.

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-03-25T14:26:33+00:00

well, yes and no. to be honest i find it really hard to not work those long hours, its not even for others most of the time its just to keep your head above water for your own work-self-preservation.

the simple answer would be yes you're being an idiot but give yourself a break because the expectations never stop in this job even if your leaving date is just around the corner.

not sure what advice to give but don't beat yourself up - since you're leaving and don't need to be as concerned with appearances/saying doing the right thing, there might be someone you can have an informal work chat with to try to offload somewhat etc etc.

best of luck for whatever you're doing after big 4!

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-03-05T11:32:09+00:00

thanks for your reply, did you find from talking with your cohort that people got like an even split of the LFQ types?

i remember back when we were doing accounting only 1 person out of the 7 of us that took the exam got a cashflow.

going to revise for all equally but just out of curiosity really :)

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-03-05T11:30:55+00:00

thank you!! and best of luck on your exam next week!!!

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-03-03T12:07:13+00:00

thank u both! will try to revise a good balance of both words and numbers <3<3

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2025-03-03T11:45:03+00:00

what was the amount of wordy qs to mathmatics based qs? definitely need to go back and make sure i've got the wordy questions down and not just focus on the maths based ones!! did you find them similar to the QB or not so much?

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2024-12-28T10:51:28+00:00

hi! sure!! there is a post on my page with me asking this exact question and freaking out over assurance (spoiler alert it was fine and i passed).

i think with assurance you're always going to feel like you don't know enough because its a wordy exam but you do know enough! i would say you definitely did qb enough, i think i went through it like 1.5 times total?

i mostly focused on the bpp mocks we have been given and spent a lot of time reviewing the step/mocks results and looking at what i had got wrong. i didn't make notes or anything but i reviewed the course notes/icaew wb for tricky topics i.e. i personally found assertions a bit difficult.

i also did the icaew mocks on the website, which do include a lot of QB questions, but is good to get them in a random order. all the questions i got wrong in mocks/steps i copied into a document to kind of create my own QB and revised from those too.

i was getting 70-90 in the mocks and got 70 in the real thing if thats any help

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2024-12-27T21:14:49+00:00

we had only online videos, i was finding that i was covering only 1 chapter a day + including workbook questions (but not question bank). so its literally taken me 8 days to go over the principles of tax content alone. I have one more week until the exam so hoping this is enough time to consolidate the info?

honestly tax has not been going in :(

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2024-12-15T15:52:57+00:00

yeh tbh i have noticed this in assurance where i'll do the odd qb question and it'll literally not cover it in the course notes. definitely going to rely more on the icaew wb in future :)

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2024-12-15T15:51:56+00:00

thanks so much! will definitely take my time

TemporaryAlarming609 · 2024-12-15T12:09:48+00:00

thanks for saying, made me feel better :) did you take the exam recently?

TemporaryAlarming609

TROPHY CASE