In person For the v Imhotep Plaster Mouldings Ltd — 2024

The claimant worked for the respondent from 27 July 2010 until 27 August 2021, when the business ceased trading after the director died. The claim was filed on 26 June 2023, after early conciliation ran from 22 June 2023 to 26 June 2023. The respondent did not attend and did not respond to the claim.

For the notice pay and unpaid holiday claims, the tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that, because of the circumstances surrounding her husband's death and her mental ill health, it was not reasonably practicable to present the claim by 26 November 2021. It also accepted that the claimant had poor mental health and physical health problems during the relevant period.

However, the tribunal found that the position had changed by around February 2022. It relied in particular on an email chain between the claimant and the government redundancy scheme dated 28 January 2022 to 2 February 2022, in which the claimant said she was trying to close down the company and asked how to obtain holiday and redundancy pay. The tribunal held that there was no evidence preventing her from filing a claim between February 2022 and June 2023, and concluded that the notice pay and holiday pay claims were out of time and outside its jurisdiction under section 23 ERA 1996 and article 7 of the 1994 Order.

The redundancy payment claim was also dismissed as out of time. The tribunal recorded that the claimant had not made a written request for redundancy pay to the company and had not presented a tribunal claim within the first six months after termination, or in the following six months. It held that it had no jurisdiction to consider an extension beyond 12 months from the effective date of termination under section 164 ERA 1996.