Mrs Lauren Taylor v Easy As 123 Limited — 2020

Mrs Lauren Taylor brought claims for breach of contract in respect of unpaid notice pay and unlawful deduction of wages in respect of unpaid holiday pay. The respondent did not attend the hearing, having notified the tribunal that it would rely on its written response.

On notice pay, the claimant produced her contract, which the tribunal found provided for three months' notice. It was common ground that the respondent had paid 46 days out of the 90 days' entitlement, leaving 44 days unpaid at £82.19 per day. The respondent argued that emails in July 2019 showed an agreed reduction of the notice period to 60 days, but the tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that those emails formed part of ACAS settlement communications and were not a contractual variation.

The tribunal therefore found that the claimant had not agreed any change to her contractual notice entitlement and was entitled to the balance of her full contractual notice, amounting to £3,616.36. The respondent's statement that payment of the judgment might cause insolvency was not accepted as a reason to deny the contractual entitlement.

On holiday pay, the tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that she had accrued 10 days' entitlement and had been paid only 2 days, leaving 8 days unpaid at £82.19 per day. The respondent said the claim was unreasonable because the claimant had taken a lot of time off when work was intermittent, but the tribunal had no evidence of that and preferred the claimant's evidence. The award for unpaid holiday pay was £657.52, making a total award of £4,273.88.