Lena Gane v Royal Mail Group Limited — 2025

Ms Gane, employed by Royal Mail as a Post Person since April 2005, brought a claim for £346.69, saying she should have been paid full sick pay for 1 to 11 November 2024 because her sickness absence was connected to an industrial injury sustained in 2012. Royal Mail said the Sick Pay and Pay Conditions Policy only allowed one additional 183-day period of industrial injury sick pay, after which the ordinary sick pay rules applied, so the half-rate payment for the disputed period was correct.

The tribunal found that the sick pay policy was contractual but that the wording about the four-year period was ambiguous. It considered the policy with the Sick Pay and Health Guide for Employees, the Claimant's Action Plan, the grievance correspondence, and the oral evidence of Ms Gane and Jason Wilson. It found the Action Plan related to work adjustments and the absence procedure, not a variation to the sick pay policy, and accepted that the Guide was not referred to the Claimant during the grievance process.

Applying the contractual interpretation authorities cited by the parties, including Investors Compensation Scheme v West Bromwich, Rainy Sky, Arnold v Britton and Wood v Capita, the tribunal preferred the Respondent's interpretation. It held that the policy allowed a single additional period of up to 183 days' industrial injury full sick pay, not a fresh entitlement every four years, and that the Claimant had therefore been paid properly. The unlawful deduction from wages claim was dismissed.