Protection of Workers Act 2021

Today the Protection of Workers (Retail & Age-Restricted Goods & Services) (Scotland) Act 2021 was given Royal Assent and came into effect across Scotland.  The Act seeks to protect shop workers by introducing “…an offence of assaulting, threatening or abusing retail workers; and to provide for a statutory aggravation of that offence where the retail worker is enforcing a statutory age restriction…”.  Calls have been made for similar statutory protections to be introduced in other parts of the United Kingdom.