in person For the v Mr A. Ross — 2020

The tribunal recorded that the claimant pursued only a bonus payment claim, having conceded at the final hearing that he was not pursuing any other complaint. The respondent accepted that the offer letter provided for a tiered bonus structure, with £5,000 at Tier 1 for achieving the specified KPIs within 10 months and £5,000 at Tier 2 for achieving the specified KPIs within 6 months. The tribunal treated the 10 January 2020 KPI list as the key document defining what had to be completed before any bonus could be released.

On the evidence, the tribunal accepted Mr Van Flute as a convincing and reliable witness and found that he acted in good faith in seeking completion of the necessary checks before any payment was made. It found that the claimant had submitted work on 30 January 2020, but that further issues remained, including code review, testing, and the transfer of files and data to AWS. The tribunal also found that the claimant became suspicious that the respondent was avoiding payment, refused repeated requests to provide the relevant files, and said he needed to speak with his solicitor before continuing further work.

The tribunal concluded that the claimant had not completed the necessary KPI conditions when he raised his grievance and that the respondent was acting reasonably in insisting on quality checks before the bonus could be approved. It referred to the bonus as a discretionary but legal bonus that could become wages within section 27(1) ERA 1996 once the conditions were satisfied, and it cited section 13 ERA 1996, New Century Cleaning Co Ltd v Church, Braganza v bp Shipping Ltd, and Wednesbury rationality in its legal discussion. The complaint that the claimant did not receive the bonus was therefore not well founded and was dismissed, and because no other claim was being pursued the proceedings were dismissed in their entirety.