Miss K Johnson v Thornton Homecare Ltd UPON a reconsideration of the — 2021

At the final hearing on 8 November 2021, the tribunal upheld Miss K Johnson’s complaint of an unauthorised deduction from wages for February 2021 and ordered payment of £1,440.88 gross. The later judgment dated 15 November 2021 was then reconsidered on the tribunal’s own initiative under rules 70 and 73, without a hearing, after the parties were given an opportunity to comment on the proposed reconsideration.

On reconsideration, the tribunal accepted that sums deducted from the claimant’s pay and not paid into the NEST Pension Scheme were unauthorised deductions from wages, and that the respondent’s own pension contributions were claims for damages for breach of contract within the tribunal’s jurisdiction under the Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction Order 1994. It held that the employee-contribution complaint could properly be quantified by reference to the sums deducted and retained, rather than a more complex calculation of actual loss.

The tribunal found that employee pension contributions deducted and not paid over totalled £944.58, after excluding a £63.77 payment made on 4 August 2020 and the February 2021 pay period where no deduction had in fact been made. It also found that unpaid employer pension contributions totalled £711.02, after excluding a £47.83 payment made on 4 August 2020 and calculating later months from October 2020 onwards on the basis of roughly 2.5% of monthly earnings where exact figures were not available. The judgment of 15 November 2021 was varied accordingly, giving a total of £3,096.48.