Claimant v City Technical Services (UK) Ltd — 2018

The claimant worked for the respondent as a gas service and maintenance engineer from 3 March 2014. He signed the module 9 parts and procurement process on 9 April 2014 and later signed terms of employment on 18 August 2014. Those terms allowed deductions on termination in specified circumstances, including overpayments and damage or misuse of materials, and the tribunal found that the claimant knew the respondent had the right to deduct the cost of unaccounted-for parts and that this was a known practice among engineers.

The dispute concerned a deduction of £567.05 from the claimant's final salary for missing stock. The respondent relied on the signed authorisation, the parts-tracking process, and the claimant's responsibility to record parts used, fitted, or returned. The claimant said the tracker portal was incomplete and inaccurate, and he produced some customer documents said to show that work had been done. The tribunal accepted that the claimant gave his evidence honestly and that the system was not infallible, but it also found Mr Daly to be a credible and reliable witness.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant may not have looked at the tracker portal during employment, but considered it highly likely that the portal was accessible through the tablet and that the process depended on engineers inputting information accurately and timeously. It found there was a lack of clear contemporaneous documentation showing return and reissue of some parts, and that the claimant could have queried the portal or kept copies of return notifications while still employed.

Although the tribunal felt the respondent had acted harshly by delaying deductions and making a one-off deduction for stock missing over a year, it could not conclude on the evidence that the deduction was unjustified. The claim was therefore dismissed.