Ms Catriona Day v Hairy Taverns Ltd — 2021

Ms Catriona Day claimed notice pay after her employment with Hairy Taverns Ltd ended in September 2020. The tribunal found that she was summarily dismissed on Tuesday 8 September 2020 and, because she was not allowed to work her notice, was entitled to one week’s pay in lieu of notice under section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The tribunal also considered the claimant’s evidence about an alleged cash-in-hand arrangement and decided it could not conclude that the contract was illegal, or that any participation in illegality made it inappropriate to hear the claim.

On the evidence, the tribunal accepted that the claimant’s normal working week was 35 hours at £8.72 per hour, giving a normal gross weekly wage of £305.20. It rejected the suggestion that the claimant was only entitled to pay for the rota’d hours remaining in that week. The tribunal found that the £196.20 shown on the final pay slip was a payment in lieu of notice, not an extra goodwill payment, and that the respondent’s accountants had erred by limiting the calculation to the hours rota’d for the rest of the week.

The tribunal therefore found that the claimant should have received £305.20 gross in lieu of notice, had already been paid £196.20 gross, and remained owed £109 gross. Judgment was entered for that amount, with directions that the respondent could deduct tax and employee national insurance from the gross sum if it issued an itemised payslip and accounted for the deductions to HMRC in the usual way.