Wendy Horrocks v Stateside Food Limited — 2022

Wendy Horrocks was employed by Stateside Food Limited as a quality auditor from April 2018 to December 2020. The Tribunal dealt with an application to amend the ET1 so that it included the contents of a narrative email sent on 16 January 2022, which added allegations about underpaid wages, work shoes, and the November 2020 contract that recorded a three-month notice period. The amendment was allowed. The Tribunal relied on the narrative email as the basis of the applications, but not the attachments, because the respondent had not seen them and an adjournment would have been disproportionate.

The claim for arrears of wages was struck out. The Tribunal held that the complaint was an unlawful deduction from wages claim governed by s.23 ERA 1996, that the alleged series of deductions ran from around July 2018 to July 2019, and that the primary limitation period expired by October or November 2019. On the material before it, there was no reasonable prospect of the claimant establishing that it had not been reasonably practicable to present the claim in time or that the Tribunal should extend time, so the claim was struck out under rule 37(1)(a).

The Respondent's application to strike out the constructive unfair dismissal claim was refused. Applying the objective approach to repudiatory breach and the last straw principle, including Leeds Dental Team Limited v Rose and Omilaju, the Tribunal held the claimant had some prospect of showing a series of breaches cumulatively amounting to a repudiatory breach. Those allegations included the pay dispute, the work-shoe issue, and the November 2020 contract change increasing her notice period from one month to three months. The Tribunal considered the issues fact-sensitive, including questions of affirmation and whether the contract change was an entirely innocuous act, and held they were not suitable for summary disposal.