Sivakumaran Saravanapavaiyar v Coventry Shri Sidhi Vinayagar Devasthanam — 2021

The tribunal found that the claimant was recruited in early 2020 to work as an Assistant Priest, with an agreed working pattern of 45 hours per week and an understanding, accepted by the tribunal, that food and accommodation would be provided free of charge. Although the written contract referred to a salary in the region of £17,000 to £18,000 a year, the tribunal found that the actual agreement was for monthly payments which, once accommodation deductions were taken into account, fell below the national minimum wage in March to August 2020. Applying section 17 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, and rejecting the respondent's argument that it could offset the full accommodation charges or treat the accommodation as subject to a separate contract, the tribunal awarded £3,699.87 gross for the underpayment.

On wrongful dismissal, the respondent relied on alleged misconduct including the handling of deity jewellery, the retention of £20 given by a devotee, brief self-exposure on CCTV, and the claimant's conduct at meetings in April 2021. The tribunal rejected those allegations as amounting either to dishonesty or to conduct serious enough to justify summary dismissal. It found that the claimant had been asked by the then Secretary to keep the jewellery safely, that he honestly and reasonably believed he could keep the £20 as a gift, that the brief exposure was unintentional while adjusting his clothes, and that his conduct at the meetings did not amount, individually or cumulatively, to repudiatory breach. The respondent was therefore not entitled to dismiss him without notice, and the claimant was awarded two months' notice pay of £3,705 gross.

On holiday pay, the tribunal found that the claimant took 20 days' holiday overall, and that it was not reasonably practicable for him to take his full leave entitlement during the 2020/2021 holiday year because of the effects of COVID-19 and the national lockdowns. It held that the untaken regulation 13 leave carried over under regulation 13(10) of the Working Time Regulations 1998, but that regulation 13A leave did not carry over on the facts found. At termination, the claimant had 2.24 days of untaken leave and was awarded £191.52 gross, calculated at 9 hours per day at £9.50 per hour.

The unlawful deduction from wages claim was dismissed because the tribunal held that it had no jurisdiction to hear it. Although the claimant argued that language barriers and unfamiliarity with tribunal claims made it impracticable to bring the claim within time, the tribunal found that he had not shown that it was not reasonably practicable to present the claim within the primary limitation period, and in any event it was not presented within a further reasonable period.