Legal health check: protect your business this new year

Posted on January 10, 2025
Posted by Sparqa Legal

Happy New Year 2025! As we welcome in the new year, it’s a great time to protect your business with a legal health check. With that in mind, we’ve set out key areas in which you can check your business is in top shape for 2025. 

Legal health check

Our free legal health check tells you whether your business is in good legal health and shows you what to do if you’re at risk. Answer some simple questions to generate a bespoke report on how well you are doing with your legal compliance. If there is a problem, you can simply click on the links in your legal health check report and go straight to the documents and guidance that you need to help you fix things. 

Key areas to check

1. Health and safety

The Health and Safety Executive has issued its annual statistics for 2023/24, which reveal that 1.7 million people in Great Britain are suffering from a work-related illness. This January is a good opportunity to check your health and safety policies and risk assessments to ensure that you are complying with your obligations and reducing the risk of workplace illnesses and injuries. 

In particular, as the weather is particularly cold at this time of year, it is especially important to be aware of the regulations that govern temperature in the workplace. The minimum temperature in an indoor workplace should be at least 16°C (or 13°C if the work involves rigorous physical effort). 

2. Consumer rights

It is essential to be aware of consumer rights, especially when selling goods over the Christmas period when customers are perhaps more likely to want to return or exchange goods. Our guide to consumer rights in online sales will help you understand consumer rights including cancellations, returns, refunds and complaints. It can also help you to ensure your customer service policies follow the law. This guide also forms part of our Starting an online business toolkit which contains the documents and known-how you need to start selling online. 

3. Terms and conditions

This new year, check that your terms and conditions are up to date. You can use our terms and conditions template to generate all the legal Ts & Cs you need, whether you sell online or face to face. These terms and conditions will protect your business by setting out terms covering price and payment, delivery, orders, responsibility for breaches of the terms, liability and confidentiality. By using these terms and conditions, you can limit your liability to the extent permitted by law, reduce the risk of disputes, and keep your intellectual property and confidential information safe. 

4. HR policies

Make sure to check your HR policies are up to date, especially keeping in mind the new duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. You can use our Staff handbook and HR policies template to make sure your HR procedures are legally compliant and to generate tailored policies with ease. Learn more here. 

5. Branding and IP

It’s important to make sure that your branding is reviewed periodically to check it is still protected by any trademark registrations you have. If it is unprotected, or you wish to apply for a trademark for the first time, you can use our Step-by-step guide to applying for a trademark online to reduce the risk of delays or problems with your registration. If you would prefer to apply for your UK trade mark by post using a paper form, see our Step-by-step guide to filling in the UK trade mark application form. You can also buy this guide as part of the Protecting IP and confidential information toolkit, which explains how NDAs, trademarks, designs, copyright and patents work. The toolkit also provides template documents to assist you. 

Conclusion

Take advantage of the new year to make sure your business is in top legal health. Doing so will help you to prepare and protect your business for 2025. Our free legal health check will help you to identify areas you could improve and our toolkits, documents and Q&A will allow you to make the necessary changes. For specific issues, you can use our Ask a Lawyer service to obtain tailored advice.