Claimant v The Quilliam Foundation Ltd — 2020

This was a rule 21 default judgment after the respondent failed to file an ET3. The Employment Judge considered the ET1 and decided the claim could properly be determined without a hearing. The claimant, Mrs MA Khan, had been employed as a Media Strategist and Researcher from 14 August 2017 under a permanent contract dated 17 August 2017. The contract allowed termination on four weeks' notice, she was home-based, and her contractual holiday entitlement of 25 days was treated as 28 days because it was below the statutory minimum under the Working Time Regulations. The leave year was taken to run from 1 January to 31 December by default.

The tribunal found that the claimant's gross salary in 2019 was £29,000, with a gross monthly rate of £2,416.67, a weekly rate of £557.69 and a daily rate of £111.54. On 28 March 2019 the respondent told her it was unable to pay her because it had run out of funds, but she continued to work and was not paid. She took no holiday between 1 January 2019 and the end of her employment. The tribunal also found that the respondent's act of locking her out of her work email on 9 September 2019 amounted to a dismissal. It accepted that redundancy was a fair reason, but because no procedure was followed the dismissal was procedurally unfair.

The claimant was awarded unpaid wages of £12,752.59, notice pay of £2,230.76, holiday pay of £2,119.26 and a statutory redundancy payment of £1,050. The tribunal said she was not entitled to a basic award for unfair dismissal as well as a statutory redundancy payment. For the unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal found that had a fair procedure been followed she would have been dismissed fairly for redundancy within a month of 9 September 2019, and it therefore limited compensation to one month's net pay of £1,895.11. The total award was £20,047.72.