In person For the v Mrs R Gray, Director — 2019

Mrs T Karolyi worked as a care worker for Helping Hands Ltd from 3 August 2016 to 7 December 2016 and presented her tribunal claim on 18 December 2018 after ACAS early conciliation. The preliminary hearing was concerned only with time limits. The tribunal accepted that she had limited English and proceeded without an interpreter after checking that she could understand the questions. It also found that she had sought advice from CAB and later from a solicitor, but chose not to litigate because of solicitor's fees, and it found no satisfactory explanation for the delay in presenting the claim.

The redundancy payment claim was dismissed. The tribunal held that the claimant did not have one complete year of service and therefore could not be entitled to a redundancy payment in any event. It also found no suggestion that she had been dismissed by reason of redundancy, or that there was any basis for extending the six-month period referred to in the judgment. The judge said the claim was so evidently hopeless that it would not be just and equitable to extend time, and that even if it had been presented in time it would have been struck out as having no prospect of success.

The unpaid holiday pay claim was treated as a claim under regulation 30 of the Working Time Regulations 1998. The tribunal found that the last possible date for payment was 7 December 2016 and that no claim was brought within the three-month primary limitation period. Applying the secondary limitation test, the judge held that it was reasonably practicable to bring the claim in time and that, even if it had not been, only a short further period could be justified; by the time the claim was issued in December 2018, that period had long expired. The unpaid wages claim, treated as a deduction from wages claim under Part II of the Employment Rights Act 1996, failed for the same limitation reasons, and all three claims were dismissed.