Thursday newspaper round-up: Virgin Atlantic, workplace lawsuits, Just Eat

The UK’s biggest electricity distribution business has agreed to pay £14.9m after its support for vulnerable customers during power cuts was deemed “totally unacceptable”. The energy regulator said National Grid’s Western Power Distribution (WPD) did not provide proper support to 1.7 million customers during the outages. An Ofgem investigation, launched in 2020, found that WPD had failed customers in a number of areas including not carrying out criminal record checks for all staff visiting customers’ homes. - Guardian

A Virgin Atlantic flight to New York was forced to return to Heathrow after bosses discovered that one of its pilots had not completed their training. Virgin Atlantic, majority-owned by billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson, apologised for the disruption to passengers and blamed a “rostering issue”. It said internal training protocols, rather than UK aviation or safety regulations, had been breached. - Telegraph

Workplace lawsuits including the word “banter” have shot up by 45pc in a year as former colleagues clash over what they deem to be acceptable office humour. The number of employment tribunal claims relating to “banter” as a justification for alleged discrimination rose from 67 in 2020 to a record 97 in 2021, according to research by law firm GQ Littler. - Telegraph

The chairman of Just Eat Takeaway resigned before the food delivery group’s annual meeting yesterday after acknowledging shareholders’ concerns at the way the company has been run. Adriaan Nuhn’s abrupt exit came as the supervisory board withdrew the vote for the re-election to the management board of Jörg Gerbig, 41, the company’s chief operating officer, amid a complaint about his personal conduct. - The Times

Construction companies are struggling to keep up with growing workloads amid the surge in materials costs and a shortage of skilled labour. Almost every contractor, builder and developer surveyed in the latest Global Construction Monitor from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said that availability of materials was a “major constraint to current activity”. - The Times