Mr M Lorusso v Hope Street Lease Ltd — 2020

At the hearing on 6 January 2020, before Employment Judge R Gall, no evidence was taken. The tribunal explored the claimant's length of service and the claimant accepted there had been a break in service between 15 April 2018 and 6 August 2018. He also accepted that he did not have the continuous service needed to pursue a constructive unfair dismissal claim, so he did not insist upon that claim.

The remaining issue was the claim for unlawful deductions from wages. The claimant said deductions had been made for income tax and national insurance but had not been accounted for to HMRC, which affected his tax record. Mr Douglas, appearing for the respondent notwithstanding the absence of an ET3, said the current respondent had only employed the claimant from April 2019 and had accounted properly for tax and national insurance, and that the earlier employer may have been MAP Solutions Ltd. The tribunal indicated that the claim may have been brought against the wrong party and that an application to add MAP as a respondent might be made.

The tribunal did not determine the merits of the wage claim at that hearing. It adjourned the case, sisted it until a case management preliminary hearing on 6 February 2020, and noted that there may be a jurisdiction issue because the sums may have been properly deducted from wages but retained by the employer rather than unpaid to the claimant.