Mr P Broadley v Wren Kitchens Limited — 2020

Mr Broadley worked as a Kitchen Designer at Wren Kitchens' Bolton store and resigned on 25 July 2018 while suspended and under investigation. The tribunal treated the case as a constructive dismissal claim alongside an unlawful deductions claim; the Working Time Regulations complaint was later withdrawn. The suspension and investigation arose from concerns about the selling of the fitting service, a customer complaint, and information that he may have used an external fitter and received referral payments.

The tribunal rejected the constructive dismissal case. It found that the April staff meeting chaired by Mo Patel was unacceptable but did not itself amount to a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence. It found that the removal of sales figures from display was because they were out of date, not because the respondent had already decided to dismiss him. It also found that the customer emails were automated reassignment messages used while the claimant was suspended, and that they were a reasonable step to keep customer orders moving rather than evidence of a decision to end his employment.

The tribunal further rejected the allegation of a concerted effort to manage the claimant out of the business and found that the performance improvement plan about selling the fitting service was a reasonable management step. It accepted that the claimant had been instructed to sell fittings but did not do so, and it found that he actively promoted a third-party fitter and had sold electrical equipment directly to a customer. The judge noted that the customer correspondence was the event that prompted the resignation, but held that it still did not contribute to any breach of contract because it was reasonable in the circumstances. On the hypothetical question of reduction, the judge said the claimant's conduct would have made dismissal inevitable and would have justified a 100% deduction.

The unlawful deductions claim failed because the claimant did not identify or prove any actual deduction from wages. The tribunal recorded that the claimant had recharacterised the complaint as being about the fairness of the process for disputing commission deductions, not about deductions themselves. The Working Time Regulations claim was dismissed after withdrawal.