Mr R Mitchell v Onsite Property Management FM Limited — 2022

The case was heard with no appearance by the respondent. The tribunal addressed a service issue caused by the ET1 being sent to an incorrect address, but found that notice had been given sufficiently close to the correct address for the hearing to proceed. If that was wrong, the tribunal said it would waive notice under Rule 6 of the Employment Tribunals Rules because no response had been lodged and the respondent had apparently said it was going into administration when that did not appear to be the case.

The claimant accepted that he did not have the requisite service to pursue unfair dismissal or redundancy pay. Those claims were therefore struck out. The tribunal then dealt with the remaining complaints of arrears of pay, holiday pay, notice pay and non-payment of expenses.

The tribunal found that the claimant started work on 15 July 2020 as an electrician and tester and that his employment ended on 29 October 2021, when he was told his employment was terminated. It found that he had not been paid his October 2021 salary and awarded £2,572.58 as an unlawful deduction from wages under section 23 ERA 1996, subject to tax and National Insurance.

On holiday pay, the tribunal found that the claimant had taken 18 of his 28 days' annual entitlement by 29 October 2021 and had accrued just over five days' untaken holiday. The reasons state £634.32, but the disposal awards £634.62 for accrued holiday pay; the order figure is reflected in the database. For notice, because no written contract was produced and the claimant could not recall the contractual notice period, the tribunal applied the statutory one-week notice period under section 86 ERA 1996 and awarded £634.62. For expenses, it accepted evidence of £1,065.09 for materials and £499.20 for parking, rejecting duplicate, undated, or post-termination invoices, and awarded £1,564.29 as contractual damages. The total monetary award was £5,406.11.