Mr. Thomas Dagwell v Ticket Media Ltd — 2022

Mr Thomas Dagwell brought a claim for unlawful deductions from wages said to arise from an underpayment of commission on a PPE sale. The tribunal found that the relevant sale was made in April 2020. It accepted that, before March 2020, the respondent’s unwritten commission policy was 5% of the value of sales, but found that a different commission arrangement applied to PPE products sold from March 2020 onwards: commission was 5% of the profit on those sales, not 5% of the sale value.

On the evidence, the tribunal preferred Mr Ross Fraser’s account over the claimant’s. It found that the claimant was told of the PPE commission arrangement in a March 2020 meeting and/or by the policy being written on a whiteboard in the office, although the tribunal did not need to decide exactly how it was communicated. It rejected the claimant’s case that no change had been communicated and that he remained entitled to 5% of the total sale value. It also rejected the claimant’s evidence that there had been a later telephone agreement to defer payment of the balance of the commission until a later unspecified date.

The tribunal found that the claim was a one-off deduction, reflected in the May 2020 payslip, so the three-month time limit began to run from that payment. Early conciliation was not started until 7 May 2021, which the tribunal found was more than eight months out of time. It held that the claim was not brought within a further reasonable period and that it was not reasonably practicable for the claim to have been presented earlier.

Although the tribunal did not determine liability because it found it had no jurisdiction, it said that if it were wrong on time limits the claim would still fail on the merits. On its findings, the claimant was entitled only to 5% of the respondent’s profit share on the PPE sale, and the £1,968.78 paid in the May 2020 payslip was the correct commission payment. It also noted that the claimant had received a further commission payment of £500 on another PPE sale, calculated by reference to 5% of a £10,000 profit.