Mrs Floarea Traistaru v First Respondent: Patrick James Long, William Stephen Long & the personal — 2025

The Tribunal found that Mrs Floarea Traistaru worked at the Lutton Farm establishment and was dismissed as redundant on 3 May 2024. Twenty or more employees at the establishment were placed at risk of redundancy on, or within 90 days of, 11 April 2024, and there was no recognised trade union or elected employee representative. The First to Fifth Respondents failed to comply with section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, so the claimant's individual claim under section 189 succeeded. The Tribunal made a protective award for 90 days beginning on 11 April 2024, with the Recoupment Regulations applying. It found no reason to depart from the stated principle that protective awards are punitive and should be for the maximum period unless circumstances make it just not to do so.

The claimant's statutory redundancy payment claim was well founded. The Tribunal awarded £1,833.33, calculated using gross weekly pay of £611.11, two years' continuous service and the claimant's age of 56 at dismissal. It also found that the claimant had not been paid wages from 8 April 2024 and awarded £2,022.02 for unauthorised deductions from wages, together with £218.28 for unpaid accrued but untaken holiday pay. Those monetary awards were ordered against the First to Fifth Respondents jointly and severally. The claimant had successfully mitigated her post-dismissal loss and made no claim for notice pay.

Lutton Farms Limited, which was in voluntary liquidation, was added as the Fifth Respondent under Rule 22. The claim against the Sixth Respondent, the Secretary of State, was not determined by this judgment and was to be listed for a case management hearing. Because the 90-day protective award was not converted into a monetary figure, the judgment did not state an aggregate total award.