In person (With Mr D’Auvergne acting as lead claimant) For the v Ms Norris, (respondent’s In-house solicitor) — 2019

The claimants were five bus drivers whose employment transferred from Arriva London North to Metroline on 26 September 2015 under TUPE. The tribunal dealt with claims under section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 concerning disturbance allowance, meal-relief payments, the method of calculating pay, and a separate Boxing Day 2015 claim by Mr D'Auvergne. The tribunal noted that the pay arrangements were complicated and that the documentation available to the claimants was unclear.

The disturbance allowance claim failed on limitation. The tribunal found that, if payable, the allowance would have been due for the period from 26 September 2015 to 26 September 2016, but the claim was brought about 24 weeks late. It held that it was reasonably practicable to present the claim in time and that there was no satisfactory explanation for the delay, so the tribunal had no jurisdiction to determine it. Mr D'Auvergne's Boxing Day 2015 claim was also dismissed on limitation grounds for the same reason.

The meal-relief claim succeeded. The tribunal accepted Mr Dyte's evidence that Arriva had paid meal-relief payments for stops at Hampstead Heath, and it found that the claimants transferred with their existing terms and conditions intact. It held that the pre-existing Metroline union agreement about Hampstead Heath did not change those transferred contractual rights, so the claimants retained a contractual entitlement to the £3.95 meal-relief payment when meal relief was taken there.

The claimants' challenge to the respondent's pay calculations failed. The tribunal accepted the respondent's worked example and held that TOD, spread over allowance, enhanced TOD and unsocial-hours enhancement were being calculated on a basis that already captured the paid time in issue. It rejected the claimants' alternative approach as double counting the time element, and it accepted that any small discrepancy between the worked example and the payslip was explained by rounding. The decision records liability only and does not quantify a final monetary award.