Mrs J Jackson v Berkeley Catering Ltd — 2020

This was the remedy judgment following the claimant's successful unfair dismissal claim. At the remedy hearing on 15 January 2020 the parties agreed that compensation for loss of statutory rights should be £300, and they agreed that the compensatory award before any statutory cap would be £63,446.28. The only live issue at the later hearing in chambers on 14 February 2020 was whether the statutory maximum under section 124 Employment Rights Act 1996 was £66,000, as the claimant contended, or £54,000, as the respondent contended.

The tribunal held that the claimant's remuneration did not vary with the amount of work done for the purposes of section 221 ERA 1996, so the weekly pay calculation had to be based on her contractual pay excluding bonus. It accepted the respondent's reliance on Evans v Malley Organisation and rejected the claimant's attempt to distinguish that authority. The tribunal found that the bonus depended on the company's overall performance rather than the claimant's individual efforts alone, so there was a weaker link between her work and the remuneration than in the authorities relied on by the claimant.

The tribunal also rejected reliance on Lock v British Gas, holding that the domestic statutory wording in the unfair dismissal context was different from the EU-law-driven approach in the holiday pay cases. It further found that the claimant was not contractually entitled to a bonus, noting that the contract of employment referred to salary, that a bonus structure was introduced later, and that there was no contractual wording establishing a bonus right. The tribunal therefore capped the compensatory award at £54,000 based on the agreed gross annual salary exclusive of bonus.