Khelsea Robinson v Michael Hyde & Associates Limited — 2022

The claimant was offered a Part II Architectural Assistant role on 17 February 2020 at a salary of £27,000 gross per annum, with a start date later confirmed as 1 April 2020. In March 2020, against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic and the respondent's financial difficulty, the claimant was told the respondent could only afford 80% of the originally offered salary. The tribunal found that on 30 March 2020 she agreed to begin employment on that reduced salary of £21,600, with the contract otherwise unchanged and the role remaining full-time over five days a week.

The claimant said she had understood the reduction might be offset by reduced hours or paid back when the respondent could afford to do so. The tribunal did not accept that any such compensation arrangement was agreed. It relied on the subsequent email exchange, including the claimant's query on 8 April 2020 about whether the 80% wage reflected a four-day week, and found that the reduced salary was confirmed as applying to a full working week. It also found that the claimant did not raise any further query about compensation or payback after that point.

The respondent later increased the claimant's salary to 90% of £27,000 from 1 July 2020, and the claimant continued working on that basis until she resigned on 8 September 2021. At the end of her employment, the respondent deducted Part 3 course fees from her final salary under clause 24.5 of the contract, which allowed recovery of training fees where employment ended before completion of the approved course. The tribunal found that the deduction was contractually authorised.

Applying section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, the tribunal held that the total wages paid were the amounts properly payable to the claimant. It therefore found that no unauthorised deductions had been made and dismissed the claim.