Mrs M Edirisinghe v Mrs A Sura t/a Pathway Independent Care and Autism Services — 2020

The tribunal found that Mrs M Edirisinghe was unfairly dismissed on 22 October 2019. In the remedy schedule it recorded that she was 33 years old at the effective date of termination and had eight full years of continuous service. Her gross pay for statutory purposes was agreed at £189.75 per week, producing a basic award of £1,518.00.

For the compensatory award, the tribunal accepted that loss should be calculated only up to 4 March 2020 because of a failure to mitigate loss. It accepted the parties' agreed figures for the pay she would have received if shifts had been offered, the net monthly pay, her alternative earnings of £841.35, and pension contributions at 3%. It also awarded £650.00 for loss of statutory rights and £12.00 for travel costs in seeking employment, but declined any further award for newspaper costs because there was no evidence. The total compensatory award before uplift was £4,848.74.

The tribunal found there had been a substantial failure to follow the ACAS Code of Practice, Discipline and Grievances at Work, which it held applied on the facts, and it ordered a 25% uplift on the compensatory award. That produced a compensatory award of £6,060.92 and a total award of £7,578.92. It also declared that the Employment Protection (Recoupment of Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support) Regulations 1996 did not apply because the claimant said she had not claimed state benefits during the loss period.

The claimant’s direct discrimination claims, pleaded as sex discrimination and pregnancy discrimination arising from her having taken maternity leave, were dismissed. The tribunal also made no separate award for notice pay or wrongful dismissal because no such claim had been included in the amended ET1, and in any event the unfair dismissal compensation covered the same period of loss. The claimant’s application for costs was dismissed.