Mr J Wilks v Warrington Fabrication Company Limited — 2025

Mr J Wilks worked for Warrington Fabrication Company Limited as a Welder Fabricator from July 2021 until 2 November 2023. He brought claims for constructive unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, unlawful deduction from wages, holiday pay and breach of contract. The tribunal accepted that his contract provided for 40 hours per week, that there was no contractual right to overtime, and that his complaints about being based at the workshop and allegedly losing hours did not reflect any breach of contract. The main events were his suspension on 21 July 2023 after a van security spot-check, the suspension letter sent on 24 July 2023, and the later delivery of some tools to the front garden of his home on 31 July 2023, after which the claimant said tools were stolen.

Applying s.95(1)(c) ERA 1996 and the implied term of trust and confidence in Malik, the tribunal rejected the claim that workshop placement or hours changes amounted to a breach, but found that the suspension and the way it was handled did. It held that there was no reasonable and proper cause for the suspension in the circumstances, that no adequate pre-suspension investigation or consideration of alternatives had been carried out, and that the process was a "knee-jerk reaction". The tribunal also found that the tools incident, taken with what had gone before, formed part of the cumulative course of conduct. It found that the claimant resigned on 2 October 2023 in response to those matters and had not affirmed the contract.

The tribunal therefore held that the claimant had been constructively dismissed and, because the respondent did not advance a potentially fair reason for dismissal, the dismissal was unfair. The basic award was £1,020, calculated by reference to two completed years of service and a gross weekly pay of £510. No compensatory award was made because the claimant immediately moved into better-paid employment after the dismissal.

The wrongful dismissal claim also succeeded. The tribunal found that the claimant should have received two weeks' full pay in notice pay, but instead received statutory sick pay, so the gross difference of £801.20 was awarded as damages for breach of contract. The separate unlawful deduction from wages claim based on the same notice-pay shortfall was well founded, but no further payment was made to avoid double recovery. The holiday-pay claim was withdrawn, the earlier wages-docking deduction complaint was withdrawn at the preliminary hearing, and the theft-of-tools breach of contract claim was dismissed because the contract expressly stated that the respondent could not be held responsible for loss or damage to personal property and no implied term of liability was found.