Miss J Dodson v Gail Marsden t/a Bake my Dayz — 2024

Miss J Dodson was employed by Gail Marsden t/a Bake my Dayz as a cook/server from 4 May 2022 to 27 May 2022. The tribunal accepted that the agreed hourly rate was £10, not £9.51 as stated in the response, and that there was no written statement of employment particulars despite the claimant asking for one. It found that she worked 98 hours and 30 minutes in the period and was owed £985 gross wages.

The tribunal rejected the respondent’s assertion that £410 had been paid in cash. It relied on the claimant’s evidence, the inconsistency of the signatures, the misspelling of the claimant’s name, and the fact that one of the dates shown on the document was a day when the claimant was not in work. The tribunal also noted messages in which the claimant asked for payment and claimed the full amount at the end of employment. The complaint of unauthorised deductions from wages was therefore well-founded.

Because the claimant succeeded in a jurisdiction listed in Schedule 5 to the Employment Act 2002, the tribunal considered section 38 of that Act. It found that when proceedings began the respondent was in breach of the duty to provide written employment particulars. There were no exceptional circumstances making the minimum award unjust or inequitable, but the tribunal declined to award four weeks’ pay because, given the claimant’s short service, that would not be just and equitable. It therefore awarded two weeks’ gross pay, quantified at £600.