Mr S Bowland-Kenyon v Integrated Air Systems Ltd — 2024

The claimant, a Project Sales Engineer employed since 2 September 2019, brought an unlawful deduction from wages claim for non-payment of sales incentive bonuses said to be due for calendar years 2021 and 2022. The tribunal held that the bonus entitlement came from the offer letter of 20 August 2019, but that only the section headed "Sales Target" governed the bonus scheme. It rejected the respondent's case that the preceding "Sales Area" and "Products and industry sectors" sections limited the bonus to UK and Ireland or to new business only.

Applying the contractual wording under Arnold v Britton principles, the tribunal found that the claimant was entitled to bonus on all sales he made, including sales to existing customers and sales outside the UK and Ireland. It accepted that the claimant had to be involved in the sales in some way, but found that he was sufficiently involved in a number of disputed orders, including the cluster of orders placed on 6 December 2021. It excluded order 2457 as attributable to Mr Clarkson, but otherwise largely accepted the claimant's position on the disputed transactions, and it used the claimant's gross profit figures where the respondent had not properly challenged them.

For 2021, the tribunal found that the qualifying gross profits exceeded the threshold for the capped bonus and that a bonus of £20,400 was due on 24 January 2022. For 2022, it found that the qualifying gross profits again exceeded the relevant threshold and that a bonus of £20,000 was due on 24 January 2023. The respondent's failure to pay each bonus was an unauthorised deduction from wages.

On limitation, the tribunal held that the 2021 deduction would have been out of time if considered alone, but that the 2021 and 2022 non-payments were a series of deductions within section 23(3)(a) ERA 1996. Relying on Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland v Agnew, it found the claim in time because proceedings were brought within time for the last deduction in the series. It also rejected the respondent's argument that the claimant had acquiesced in, or agreed by implication to, a variation removing his contractual bonus entitlement.