Mrs K Hurley v Mr Muneeb Diwan t/a Chilton Croft Dementia & Nursing Home — 2019

Mrs K Hurley, a qualified nurse working through an agency, attended an interview with Mr Muneeb Diwan t/a Chilton Croft Dementia & Nursing Home on 8 February 2019. The tribunal accepted her evidence, supported by contemporaneous text messages on 15 and 16 February 2019, that Mr Diwan offered her the post of staff nurse and that the parties agreed a rate of pay of £17 per hour. The texts also referred to uniform and start dates, and the tribunal found there was no mention of any unpaid trial period.

The tribunal found that the claimant worked a three-hour training session on 7 March 2019 and two 12-hour shifts on 11 and 14 March 2019, making 27 hours in total, and that she was not paid for that work. On the balance of probabilities, the tribunal held that there had been an oral agreement for paid work and that the claimant was contractually entitled to be paid £17 per hour. The claim of unauthorised deduction from wages therefore succeeded.

The respondent was not present at the hearing, although the tribunal was satisfied that he had notice and proceeded in his absence, taking the contents of the Response into account. The respondent's case was that the claimant was not an employee and that the hours worked were an unpaid trial period, with a later letter enclosing proposed trial-period terms and offering payment only at the minimum wage rate. The tribunal rejected that account on the evidence before it. It awarded £459 for the unpaid 27 hours at £17 per hour.

The claimant also asked for £500 said to represent loss of earnings from agency shifts she declined while believing she was employed by the respondent. The tribunal said that, although it sympathised with that position, this was not an unlawful deduction from wages and no award was made for it.