NEW legislation designed to offer greater protection for retail and bar staff from customer abuse came into force last week.
The Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021 creates an offence of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker engaged in ‘retail work’; and creates an aggravation to that offence where the worker is enforcing a statutory age restriction.
The law, which aims to offer additional protection to that under existing laws, extends to bar staff, with the Act’s explanatory notes stating: “For example, in a hotel that includes (as a small part of the premises) a public bar, the staff serving alcohol in the bar would be doing ‘retail work’, but most other hotel staff (including reception staff, porters and cleaners) would not.”
