Miss R Hannon v Sooty’s and Sweep’s Limited — 2020

The tribunal dealt with a single complaint: Miss R Hannon’s claim for unpaid holiday pay for the holiday year January 2019 to October 2019. It also substituted Sooty’s and Sweep’s Limited as the correct respondent in place of David Martin Williams. Sitting alone, Employment Judge McDonald heard evidence from the claimant and from Mr Martin Williams, and had the employment contract, respondent bundle and payslips before him.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant’s holiday year was the calendar year and that she left employment on 17 October 2019. On that basis her entitlement for 2019 was pro rata at 0.79 of a full year. The tribunal found that she had taken 22.5 hours’ holiday in January 2019 and had been paid the net equivalent of £191.25 gross holiday pay for that month, but had not received any other holiday pay for the 2019 holiday year. It also noted that she had been on maternity leave from February 2019 and was receiving SMP rather than normal wages from that point.

Applying regulations 13, 13A and 14 of the Working Time Regulations, and the approach in Bear Scotland & Others v Fulton & Others to calculating holiday pay by reference to average pay, the tribunal used the claimant’s November 2018, December 2018 and January 2019 payslips to calculate her average weekly pay. It concluded that her average weekly hours were 30.8 and, at the agreed hourly rate of £8.50, her weekly pay was £261.80. That produced holiday pay of £1,151.92 for the adjusted 4.4 weeks’ entitlement for the year.

From that figure the tribunal deducted the £191.25 already paid for January 2019, leaving £960.67 gross due to the claimant. The judgment ordered the respondent to pay that sum, subject to deductions for tax and national insurance and remittance of those deductions to the appropriate authorities.