Miss Geike v Robshaws Total Property Care Group Limited — 2020

The claimant had worked as a cleaner since 27 June 2016, paid at the minimum wage, and the tribunal accepted that her work was transferred to the respondent from 25 November 2019. The respondent did not appear at the hearing. The tribunal substituted Robshaws Total Property Care Group Limited for the trading name used in the claim because the company had been contacted during early conciliation and the claimant had plainly intended to sue the business that took over her cleaning work.

The tribunal found that the respondent had taken on the claimant's employment after paying her for five weeks' work and that TUPE applied because there had been a relevant transfer by way of a service provision change. When the respondent did not pay her on 10 January 2020 and sent other workers to do her job, that amounted to a fundamental breach which she accepted when she left on 18 January 2020. The tribunal therefore held that she had been constructively dismissed and that the unfair dismissal claim succeeded. It also found no potentially fair reason on the evidence and held that the dismissal was unfair.

The tribunal found a breach of paragraph 4 of the ACAS Code of Practice on Discipline and Grievance Procedures because the respondent made no effort to respond to most of the claimant's calls or emails, so she was not able to raise her concerns properly. It applied a 10% uplift for that breach. On remedy, it awarded a basic award of £221.57 and assessed the compensatory loss at £1,576.66 before uplift, made up of loss of earnings on the basis that she could have found work within six months if she had made reasonable efforts, plus £250 for loss of statutory rights. The 10% uplift took the compensatory element to £1,734.32, and the overall unfair-dismissal award was £1,955.89.

The tribunal also upheld the holiday pay claim and awarded £13.13 for 1.6 hours of accrued holiday between 1 and 17 January 2020. It upheld the wages claim and awarded £98.52 because the claimant had only been paid one week's wages on 24 January 2020 when she had worked three weeks. The recoupment regulations applied to the unfair-dismissal award, with a prescribed element of £1,326.66 for the period 18 January 2020 to 17 July 2020 and an excess of £629.23.