(1) Janice Irwin (2) Weininger Irwin v Ilford Sports Club Limited — 2023

Janice Irwin and Weininger Irwin brought claims against Ilford Sports Club Limited for unlawful deductions from wages, automatic unfair dismissal, ordinary unfair dismissal, holiday pay and breach of the duty to provide written particulars. The duplicate claims in case numbers 3220511/2020 and 3220512/2020 were withdrawn and dismissed.

The tribunal held that the claims for unpaid wages said to be due from December 2019 to 8 March 2020 were out of time under s.23 ERA 1996, and that it was reasonably practicable to have brought them in time. The national minimum wage claims were also out of time. On the merits, however, the tribunal found the claimants were engaged in unmeasured work rather than salaried hours work, and that during furlough they did no hours for the respondent, so the NMW claims could not succeed. The tribunal nevertheless found that, had the December 2019 to March 2020 wage claims been in time, the respondent had not paid the full contractual wage.

Claims for unpaid wages for 1-19 August 2020 succeeded, as did the claims for unpaid notice pay. The tribunal also found that each claimant was entitled to 18 days' accrued but untaken holiday pay on termination. The tribunal found the respondent had failed to provide written statements of employment particulars and particulars of change, and awarded each claimant two weeks' pay under s.38 of the Employment Act 2002, with the amount to be fixed at remedy hearing unless agreed.

On dismissal, the tribunal accepted that the principal reason was redundancy rather than the protected disclosures or the assertion of a statutory right. It therefore dismissed the s.103A protected disclosure claims and the s.104 statutory-right claims. The ordinary unfair dismissal claims succeeded because, although redundancy was a potentially fair reason, the dismissal process involved no warning, consultation or meaningful consideration of alternatives. Applying its Polkey assessment, the tribunal found that, had a fair redundancy process been followed, the claimants would likely have remained employed through August and September 2020 and then been given notice of redundancy in mid-October 2020 after investigation of the grant position and the club's finances.