In person For the v Ms G Nicholls, Counsel — 2025

The Tribunal upheld the claimant's claims for unpaid wages, holiday pay and breach of contract for failure to give notice. The respondent had argued that no written contract had been issued and that the claimant was guilty of gross misconduct entitling it to dismiss without notice. The Tribunal found that no written contract had been issued (the document the claimant relied on at page 63 of the bundle was found, on a balance of probabilities, to have been put together by the claimant towards the end of her employment) but that, construing the contract from the surrounding circumstances, the claimant (a senior employee) was entitled to eight weeks' notice; the draft circulated within the respondent's business provided clear evidence of the intended notice terms.

The Tribunal also concluded that the claimant's conduct, while reprehensible in a senior manager, fell short of the threshold of gross misconduct that would have justified summary dismissal. The respondent was therefore in breach of contract by not giving the eight weeks' notice and the claimant was entitled to net damages of £17,703.04 for the notice period, in addition to the unpaid wages and holiday pay.

The judgment originally contained an arithmetical error on the notice period that the Tribunal reconsidered immediately when counsel for the respondent pointed it out. The total payable to the claimant is a net sum of £22,571.42. Written reasons were provided at the request of the respondent. PDF was truncated.

Source tags (gov.uk)

• Breach of Contract
• Unlawful Deduction from Wages and Working Time Regulations

• Article 4 Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) Order 1994
• s.13 Employment Rights Act 1996
• s.23 Employment Rights Act 1996

Total award

£22,571

The full judgment is available on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

• Judgment 1 (PDF) ↗
• Judgment 2 (PDF) ↗