(1) Mrs S Whitehouse (2) Miss D Dawson v *Stephen Clark* and 1 other — 2019

The tribunal dismissed case numbers 1800396/2019 and 1800424/2019 as duplicates, and it also dismissed the claims against the second respondent upon withdrawal. It then found that Mrs Whitehouse and Miss Dawson were personally employed by the first respondent from 6 November 2018 until their summary dismissal on 27 November 2018, following the transfer of the Rioco Café, now known as Leos Café and Bar, from the second respondent to the first respondent on 6 November 2018.

The dismissals were held to be automatically unfair under regulation 7 of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006. The tribunal awarded Mrs Whitehouse a basic award of £2,129.76 and a compensatory award of £1,803.36, made up of loss of earnings during the 12-week notice period and £300 for loss of statutory rights. Miss Dawson was awarded a basic award of £3,288.60 and a compensatory award of £5,395.78, made up of loss of earnings during the 10-week notice period, later loss of earnings to 1 April 2019, future loss of earnings for 52 weeks, and £300 for loss of statutory rights.

The tribunal initially announced an uplift of 25 percent on the compensatory awards for non-compliance with the ACAS code of practice, but later revoked that uplift on its own initiative, saying it could not justify a finding that there had been an unreasonable failure to comply with any specific provision of the code. It recorded that the additional awards of £450.84 for Mrs Whitehouse and £1,348.95 for Miss Dawson were no longer applicable.

On an alternative basis, the tribunal said that if the principal reason for dismissal had been redundancy, the claimants would not have been disentitled to a redundancy payment under section 141 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 because no suitable alternative employment had been offered before the end of employment, and the immediate offer of 12 to 14 hours' cleaning work split between them was not suitable. It dismissed the section 93 complaint about written reasons because no request had actually been made, and it upheld the holiday pay complaint, finding an unauthorised deduction from wages for accrued holiday pay between 6 and 27 November 2018 and awarding £40.09 gross to Mrs Whitehouse and £75.17 gross to Miss Dawson.