(sitting alone) Miss Nicole Lavery v Supreme Recruitment Agency Ltd — 2021

Miss Nicole Lavery worked for Supreme Recruitment Agency Ltd as a Catering Assistant from 23 April 2019 until 15 February 2020. She was paid £8.21 per hour, had no statement of terms, and no holiday records were produced. The tribunal identified a single issue: whether she was owed payment in lieu of untaken holiday on termination of employment.

The tribunal found that, in the absence of a contract, the Working Time Regulations 1998 applied to her annual leave entitlement. It accepted the claimant’s evidence that she had not been paid for any annual leave by the end of her employment, and it used the best evidence available to determine her working pattern: around 40 hours per week until the end of September 2019, then 16 hours per week from 1 October 2019 to 4 December 2019, and 20 hours per week from 5 December 2019 to 15 February 2020, with the two-week Christmas period excluded.

On that basis, the tribunal calculated that the claimant had accrued 146.582908 hours of holiday and was entitled to holiday pay of £1203.45. It then deducted the £340.72 payment on account that she had received after employment ended, leaving £862.73 due. The tribunal held that she had not consented to the deduction from wages and therefore found an unlawful deduction of wages in that amount.

The respondent did not attend the final hearing. The tribunal was satisfied that notice of the hearing had been given and that it was appropriate to proceed in the respondent’s absence. The final order was that the respondent pay the claimant £862.73, subject to any required deductions for tax and national insurance being intimated in writing and remitted to HMRC.