Mr D. Rogers v United Services (Chingford) Club Limited — 2020

Mr Rogers was employed as an assistant bar steward from 3 April 2019 on contractual rates of £10.50 per hour for Monday and Wednesday shifts and £8.50 per hour for Sunday bar work, later increased to £8.72 from 1 April 2020. After events in January and February 2020, including a reported threat to the claimant and a police report about live bullets left at his doorstep, Mr Eskelsen twice told him not to attend work while a risk assessment was said to be taking place.

The tribunal found that no meaningful risk assessment had in fact been carried out, and that the instruction not to attend work was never revoked during the material period. It rejected the respondent’s case that the claimant was simply absent without leave. The tribunal also accepted that the police had not instructed the claimant not to work, but held that this was not decisive because the respondent itself had told him not to attend and had taken the issue out of his hands. The tribunal found that the burden was on the respondent to provide a safe place of work, and that it had not shown that it had done so.

Applying Part 2 and ss.13 to 27B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, the tribunal concluded that the claimant’s wages were properly payable for the period he was following the respondent’s instruction not to attend. It held that the respondent made unauthorised deductions from wages and accepted the claimant’s calculation in the appendix. The respondent was ordered to pay £868.51 gross, subject to any appropriate deductions for tax and national insurance.