Ms R Ilieva v The Real Hellenic Taste T/A Great Grill House — 2020

Ms R Ilieva worked for the respondent as a chef from 30 October 2018 until her dismissal on 17 January 2021. The tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was misconduct arising from sexual intimacy between the claimant and a waiter at work, including two CCTV-recorded incidents on 15 and 16 January 2021 and a further incident said to have been witnessed by a Deliveroo driver. It accepted that Ms Giagoumi genuinely believed misconduct had occurred and that the claimant accepted her conduct was inappropriate, but the tribunal found the employer had not carried out a reasonable investigation, had not told the claimant in advance what the meeting was about, had held the disciplinary meeting jointly with the waiter, and had not confirmed the outcome in writing or given appeal rights.

On that basis the tribunal held that the dismissal was outside the range of reasonable responses and was unfair under section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The statutory redundancy pay claim failed because the tribunal found the dismissal was for misconduct rather than redundancy.

The holiday pay claim also failed. The tribunal found that the contractual holiday year ran from 3 April to 2 April, that the claimant was entitled to 28 days' leave a year, that she had accrued 4.42 weeks by the effective date of termination, and that after taking 2.8 weeks in the summer she had 8.1 days left, valued at £712.80 on the tribunal's calculation. It then found that this sum had already been paid on 3 December 2020, so no further holiday pay was due. The unlawful deduction from wages claim succeeded because the respondent accepted that the final January 2021 salary had not been paid and accepted the correct gross sum was £902.04.

At the remedy stage for unfair dismissal, the tribunal made provisional findings only. It considered that a fair process would have taken about two weeks and that dismissal would have been inevitable in any event, so there would have been a 100% Polkey reduction. It also provisionally found that the claimant's conduct justified a 100% reduction to both basic and compensatory awards for contributory fault. A remedy hearing was to follow, so no final unfair dismissal compensation was quantified in this judgment.