Mrs A Da Silva v Haus Maids Bishops Stortford Ltd — 2023

Mrs A Da Silva brought claims that included unpaid wages, holiday pay and notice pay. The tribunal recorded that race discrimination had been withdrawn by the hearing and that she did not have two years' service for unfair dismissal. The substantive dispute was whether she had a contractual right to £1,500 per month, whether the respondent had paid her notice correctly, and whether any holiday remained due on termination.

On wages, the tribunal rejected the claimant's reliance on the Indeed advertisement as creating a contractual rate of £1,500 per month. It found that the contract and offer letter provided for fixed percentage pay, initially 23% and later 25%, and that the claimant was aware of that method from the respondent's app and from the way her diary entries recorded the client fee and her expected share. The tribunal therefore rejected the broader claim for outstanding wages based on the alleged £1,500 monthly rate.

The tribunal nevertheless found, from the claimant's 2022 work logbook/diary, that she had worked on 7 and 17 January 2022 and that those dates had wrongly been recorded as holiday. It held that she was entitled to unpaid wages for those two days, subject to credit for holiday pay already paid for them, and to 2 days accrued but untaken holiday for the 2022 holiday year. It also held that unused 2021 holiday was lost because the contract did not permit carry-over and there was no agreement to carry it forward.

The notice pay claim was dismissed. The tribunal found the contract provided for one week's notice and accepted the respondent's evidence that the final payment included notice pay, with £200 of the £661 final salary payment attributed to notice. The written judgment did not fix a final monetary total for the wages and holiday entitlements, and instead directed the parties to agree the figures, with a further hearing only if they could not do so.