Mr B Miah v London Ambulance Service NHS Trust — 2022

The claimant was employed by London Ambulance Service NHS Trust as Emergency Ambulance Crew on a part-time annualised hours arrangement. He claimed unlawful deductions from wages in relation to unsocial hours pay for 30 May 2021 to 28 August 2021 and disruption payments for shifts worked on 25, 26 and 27 December 2021.

On unsocial hours pay, the tribunal found that the relevant contractual and policy documents required calculation over a 13-week reference period, but did not support calculating the claimant's entitlement by reference to what the respondent said he should have worked in that period. On a plain reading, unsocial hours were to be calculated as a proportion of the hours actually worked. Because more than 56% of the claimant's actual hours in the relevant period were unsocial, he was entitled to the 25% enhancement, and the agreed deduction of £473.93 was unlawful.

On disruption payments, the tribunal found that the Christmas bulletin, read as a whole, applied disruption payments to overtime shifts only, including core rota shifts worked as overtime. The claimant had asked for the relevant December shifts to be recorded as core shifts before payment was processed, and they were paid as standard hours. He was therefore not entitled to disruption payments, and that part of the unlawful deductions claim did not succeed.