- IN PERSON FOR THE v Respondent — 2021

The claimant, Mr Ian Tapping, brought discrete monetary claims which the tribunal heard separately from the later final hearing listed for October 2021. The tribunal identified an underpayment issue arising from a TAHL income uplift after 26 November 2019 and an administrative error in recording the claimant's resignation date, but recorded that both matters had been corrected by payments made in March, April and May 2020. On that basis, the claims for unlawful deductions from salary, failure to make employer pension contributions, and unpaid holiday pay were dismissed because the tribunal accepted that no sums remained outstanding.

The remaining issue concerned the pension projection the claimant had received in January 2020. He said it had been based on contributions only up to 31 January 2020 and on salary figures that did not include the TAHL payment, and he relied on a projected pension figure of £10,114.20 and an estimated annual loss of about £3,600. Shortly before the hearing the respondent produced an updated final retirement quote of £10,247.92, which the claimant saw during the hearing, but he remained unconvinced without seeing the calculation basis.

The Employment Judge expressed a provisional view that there was no obvious basis for an Employment Tribunal claim about a pension fund's calculation of pension entitlement. The judge said such a claim did not appear to be wages within the meaning of section 27(2)(c) ERA 1996 and did not appear to fall within the tribunal's contractual jurisdiction because it was neither outstanding on termination nor arising from termination. The judge also noted that any error by the pension fund trustees would not be a breach by the respondent, and the trustees were not parties to the proceedings.

Because the jurisdiction point and the correct respondent for this part of the case had not previously been raised, the tribunal did not dismiss that claim at the hearing. Instead, it adjourned the issue for 14 days to allow the claimant to make further submissions, with the indication that the claim would be dismissed if no further submissions were made.