Mr J Inglis v X Arthurlie Ltd and 4 others — 2021

The tribunal held that Alpine 2018 Ltd, the second respondent, was the entity that employed the claimant at the date of dismissal. The claims against X Arthurlie Ltd, Baljit Singh and Tarsem Kumar, Alpino’s Fish and Chips, and Neilston Ltd were therefore dismissed. The case proceeded on the basis of the claimant’s unchallenged written account and supporting material because the respondents did not engage with the tribunal process after the initial responses.

The claimant had worked as a fish fryer from 20 August 2016. The business transferred on 30 November 2018, but the tribunal found that the employing entity did not change. It found that the claimant received cash wages, no written statement of particulars, no payslips or other documents identifying the employer, and that his employment ended on 28 April 2019 after he asked to be paid wages that were delayed. The tribunal accepted that he had 11.6 days of untaken holiday at dismissal.

Holiday pay succeeded under the Working Time Regulations 1998. The tribunal calculated 11.6 days as 2.32 weeks and awarded £1,294.56 gross, subject to statutory deductions. Unfair dismissal also succeeded: the tribunal found no fair reason for dismissal and no procedure leading to the dismissal, and held the dismissal was unfair within section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It awarded a basic award of £1,674 and a compensatory award of £6,067.50, based on 17 weeks’ loss less interim earnings, plus £300 for loss of statutory rights. The tribunal noted that recoupment did not apply because the claimant was not in receipt of relevant benefits.

The tribunal also made an award of £1,116 under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002 because the claimant had not been given a written statement of particulars of employment. It did not consider it just to award the higher four-week amount. The redundancy payment claim failed because the tribunal found there was no redundancy situation; it also observed that the basic award for unfair dismissal was in any event the same amount that would have been payable by way of redundancy payment.